


Ruins

by Nrubluos



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Backstory, Flashbacks, Gen, RP character, Voldune, vulpera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nrubluos/pseuds/Nrubluos
Summary: Voldune is a hard place to live, and the people who find a way rarely have room for flights of fancy. The dunes are harsh, the indigenous peoples are merciless, and the war to the south is spreading ever more horrors. To live in Voldune is difficult, but to live in Voldune as a slave is to fight, and beat, death each day and carve a precious few hours of rest from the night. Telloslyra survived. This is her story.
Comments: 43
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue - Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers all,  
>  Just going to use this as a place to drop scenes from the life of a little Vulpera warlock as she makes her way in the world.  
>  Some of them might be funny. Some might be exciting. Some might be an adventure or even a bit of back-and-forth with a goblin.  
>  Some might be cold hearted desperation and terror.  
>  But that's what makes a story interesting, that's what makes a game fun. Making the mundane into the extraordinary and finding the wonder, and the horror, in a passing thought.
> 
> For those of you who know me, I hope you like the glimpse into the world that I see for my characters.  
>  And for those of you who do not... enjoy.

Prologue - Ruin

Picking through the scattered remains of the ruin, Telloslyra stuffed a handful of small items into the satchel lashed securely on her back. She'd been at it for a few minutes and the flickering light of a floating candle was steadily getting on her nerves.

Magic was great, it had fixed so many of the problems in her short life, but that didn't mean she couldn't complain about a few of the gifts she'd been given.

Years, entire years of her life, she'd done nothing more than what she'd been told. If they said to dig a hole, she dug a hole. If they said carry a rock, she'd carry the rock. And if they'd said to ignore the missing slaves when she came back from digging a hole and putting a rock on top, she did her very best to ignore the not-so-missing slaves that had been lain, unmoving, in a hole she had dug, by another slave, before she'd put the rock she'd been carrying on top.

And the entire time, it had only been a promise away from being over.

She hadn't been Telloslyra then, only bitch. She'd never liked being bitch. It wasn't a name. It was a thing.

She liked her name now, it meant "the living song of ones life." She had given it to herself. She couldn't remember what her mother had called her.

Her grip tightened, short claws digging into the dry bone handle of her staff as she picked over another pile of rubble.

How many had been lost? How many had been made to suffer simply because they hadn't understood?

She'd wondered if that was what life was. She'd wondered if that was what they all had to look forward to. Another night. Another missing face. Another fading memory. Another scar under the moonlight.

It had always seemed too far, too hard, and too dangerous — the thought that they could live without the lash. They had whispered, huddled in the dark, pressed in cracks and crevices to keep the sand and wind and cold at bay, and they had dreamed tiny, fragile, dreams where they would not starve or freeze or wither in the unrelenting sun.

But the voices, the countless, hopeless, nameless voices... they would whisper back at the impossibility of it all. There were always so many reasons why it wouldn't work, why it couldn't work. So many things that would grind them down into dust and scatter them to the winds to be forgotten.

And all it had taken was sneaking away one night, hiding a broken plate in the folds of her pants, and cutting the throat of that monster of a slave driver while he slept.

The voices had been silenced.

They had eaten well that night, for the first time in months, but none of them had enjoyed the taste.

A glimmer of reflected light caught her attention and, for a moment, the past was forgotten. Gold. Old, worn coins, glinted up from beneath some threadbare fabric. What had probably once been a rich carpet had been reduced to so much dusty red fiber. She brushed it aside and started plucking up the coins, stuffing them, one at a time so they wouldn't clink, into her bag.

In short order, they were gone, a sandy hole with splintered wood the only sign of where the strongbox had once held wealth, and she was moving again.

Quietly, moving over and around the piles of debris, she picked her way carefully through the ruin.

It had been easy. So easy. Why hadn't she done it years ago? Why hadn't any of them done it years ago?

Days of labor and nights of fearful slumber. Day after day, night after endless night, always looking over ones shoulder and expecting the whip or worse.

And all it had taken was a broken plate and the will to give themselves hope.

That... that and a book she'd stuffed into her bag, hoping to barter for food or shelter while running.

New whispers had come, quiet at first, but ever stronger. Always hinting at other ways to survive, and then later, ways to thrive.

Whispers that had told her to protect the book, to keep it secret and safe. To do whatever she needed to keep the book for herself.

It had not known what she was. It had not known what they were.

And when she'd finally decided to heed those whispers, after weeks of sleepless nights, it had not known that she would be its master.

She smiled a tight lipped smile as the soft pop of an imp alerted her to another temporary servant.

"Find the gold and bring it to me," she said with a smile.

The imp cackled softly before bounding off into the ruin for however long it decided to remain.

Telloslyra slipped a hand into the folds of her vest, touching the old book just to make certain it was still secure.

The slavers, she knew, weren't evil. They did what they did to survive... they took what they could, what they needed, because they were strong enough to do so.

But, they weren't evil.

They stole people from whatever troupes they found, killing the warriors and breaking families apart. They kept the broken willed and introduced them to labor. They took the young and trained them to be servants. They ate the infants and the infirmed... there was nothing wasted on that which could not benefit them in some way.

But, they weren't evil.

They were born in the desert, lived in the desert, and in the end they returned to the desert. They were the desert... pitiless and harsh, a cruel thing of nature that cared not for those that shared the sands with them, for they did not share those sands — they were the sands.

But, they weren't evil... they just, simply, were.

And, in the end, they were treated like the desert that they so violently professed mastery over. They were a cold certainty in a land of absolutes. But, though they were a fact of Voldune, the book was of something far older.

Telloslyra touched a brittle flower blooming in the dark of night, its tiny roots, tough as iron, burrowed securely in a crack in the old stonework.

She drew a small dagger and picked at the crack, freeing the flowering moss, and carefully placing it within her bag. Seeing nothing else of interest in the ruin, she clicked her tongue softly, instantly drawing the attention of her personal servant, the imp bounding over with a sharp toothed eagerness that spoke of wicked deeds and wanton mischief.

"Come, imp. We're done here."

Another soft pop announced the arrival of another, nameless imp, which hopped around eagerly looking for trouble.

"Follow me," Telloslyra intoned, causing the new imp to bounce into formation behind her with the other seven that came scampering over, many cheerfully tossing coins or small valuables into her bag.

She wandered towards the gap she'd used to enter the ruin, pausing as she warily glanced out, looking for ambushers, before slipping out into the night, the floating candle snuffing itself and plunging her into darkness.

Telloslyra trotted along, silently on cloth-covered feet, leaving no footprints for others to track. She wouldn't go back to that life. Never again. But the sudden sound of shifting of sand made her drop to the ground and still her breath.

Emerging from the sands, no more than a few dozen paces away, an enormous snake slid into the night, cloudy eyes suggesting an advanced age. Still, a snake, no matter what age, was a dangerous opponent at the best of times, but a runaway slave, by herself, in the night? That was a recipe for disaster.

Slowly, quietly, Telloslyra parted the folds of her vest as the snake's head panned to scan its surroundings, tongue flicking as it tasted the air.

And then the soft pop of another imp arriving sent the hairs on the back of her head on end.

The snake's head pivoted to the sound, tongue flicking with interest before its hood flared, loosing a wicked hiss.

No, her slavers were not evil, but they were the desert, and the desert was without mercy.

But Telloslyra wasn't a helpless slave. She hadn't been since hiding a broken plate... since finding that book and reading its cursed pages.

Springing to her feet, she snarled into the night and loosed a brilliant pillar of flame that slithered across the sands as all nine of her imps hurled bolts of clinging flame of their own.

Within moments, the snake fell; a smoldering corpse in the night. The flames died almost instantly, remnants of a life she'd spent years ago.

The desert was without mercy, and bitch tore chunks from the creature before returning to the ruin.

Another pop announced the arrival of a new imp which hissed out a laugh as it joined its friends in looting the corpses of a forgotten ruin, deep in the deserts of Voldune.


	2. Ruin 01 - The Vulpera in the Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sands of Voldune hold many mysteries. Some more hidden than others. To a child, each day is a story to be told, each moment a game to be played. Some stories, some games, have a lesson, and in the sandy memories of every Vulpera, those lessons are taught by the dunes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every story has to start somewhere; some more some than where. For our little fox, that somewhere is where most such tales start, in the hilly sands of Voldune.

The sand was cool to the touch and the desert breeze was so absolutely wonderful after such a hot day. There were dreams up there, hanging in the sky. Little tufts of grass and a few of the little white flowers that they sometimes made into drinks. There were bugs and birds and at least one squiggly snake for good measure, because that's what dreams were when you used stars to nail them into the sky at night.

The dunes were calm in the cool light, rippled with little waves from the day and littered with wobbly shadows where things moved about in the cool. It was a perfect time to get something to eat, and that was exactly what they were doing.

The sands were too hot in the day to do much, and too dry in the evening to be good for anything. The morning was too late to hunt since the good things had already been snatched up, but the night? When the dunes had cooled to almost cold? When the heat of the day had bled away and the breeze off the coast was finally warmer than the rocks and other things poked up from the sands? That's when all the tasty things came out to get their water.

Not like them. Nope. Vulpera didn't need water. Well, not like the bugs did. The bugs needed water because they were already crunchy! The water just made them pop when you bit them, and that was the best part, so the bugs needed water to be good bugs. And the little lizards? They kinda needed water... but mostly because she was sure they were really just yummy rocks. She'd asked Mom once about the lizard rocks, but Mom said that lizards weren't rocks, they just looked like them. But she knew better. She'd hunted the lizard rocks, and they disappeared INTO other rocks, so they must be rocks.

That's what sand did. You could pick up a piece of sand and it would be so easy to see. It would be all sand colored and she could ALWAYS find some of it in her ears. You couldn't NOT find sand in your ears, she was sure of it, not unless you weren't playing in it right. Sand in your ears was practically a requirement for being sand.

But, when it got in her fur, it was sometimes hard to see. She was sand colored too. Pretty sand colored, Mom said. The right color for a Vulpera, Mom said, because just like the sand in her ears, there were Vulpera in the sands.

And when you dropped a grain of sand on a dune of sand, even if it was the prettiest piece of sand you'd ever seen, it was gone because the dunes were MADE of sand.

It had been a very big thing when she'd figured that out, and Mom had been so proud of her. They'd spent the entire night hunting lizards instead of bugs.

But she was still certain lizards were secretly rocks because if you chased a lizard and it made it to some rocks it would disappear just like sand in the dunes.

It made perfect sense.

And Voldune WAS sand and rock and even a little bit of water (like the bugs!).

And so were Vulpera.

She held her breath as she listened to the sand in her ears.

There were sounds there, in the night. There were sounds in the sands.

Little scratchy things. Little scrapey things. Little crunchy, crawly, bitey things.

They were the Ranishu, the bitey things, and they were everywhere and nowhere in the sands.

When Mom said they had to get to the rocks, they always ran to the rocks because the Ranishu were in the sand.

She'd watched as they'd come out from time to time, little rocks with teeth and claws, that raced around like mudballs down a dune. One minute, she'd be playing in the sand, and the next they'd be running to whatever rocks they were closest too. They'd always make it, Mom was great like that, but even so, she'd always make sure that they slept on rocks in case the Ranishu got sneaky.

She'd thought it was magic, when she was little. Mom's ears would twist around and then she'd turn to look and then she'd pluck her up and they'd run to the rocks. It was a fun little game where they'd race the Ranishu, and she loved it.

Mom was the best at racing the Ranishu. She never lost.

And they'd get there and she'd hop down and Mom would point at the little pile of them that would show up and make a squirming, chittering, hissing pile. And they'd watch or they'd hunt lizards until the Ranishu sunk back into the sands or rolled off to wherever Ranishu went when they weren't squirming and chittering and piling and hissing.

She had thought the Ranishu were neat, until one day Mom and her had beat a lizard back to the rocks and the Ranishu beat the lizard to the rocks too.

Ranishu don't like rocks. She'd learned that. Ranishu liked sand.

But the lizard was just a small rock, so she guessed that they thought it would be okay to play with the lizard (because lizards are totally just secret rocks) and they'd piled up on the lizard and squirmed and chittered and hissed, and then sunk into the sand.

And that's when she'd learned that the Ranishu liked rocks too. They just didn't like to race on them. And Ranishu never walked.

The Ranishu eat what they race, and they race anything.

Mom never lost to the Ranishu... and she wouldn't either because she was Vulpera.

She listened to the sounds of the sand, and there was sound in the sand. It was scrapey and shifty and maybe a little crunchy, but it wasn't hissy or chittery so it wasn't the Ranishu.

She'd learned to listen to the dunes. They spoke, after all, but were very quiet.

Sometimes they'd sigh or shhhhhh her. Sometimes they'd clack when something found a rock. Sometimes they'd breathe just a little bit or wave their tails in the sky if it was windy so she knew there were Vulpera in the dunes. She had a tail too, and it was always sandy when she got on the rocks. She'd made little dunes with the sand in her tail and the sand was her colored.

But sometimes the dunes would whisper things, little things, and she knew the Vulpera in the dunes were trying to tell her things.

When the dunes whispered, but everything else was quiet, you could hear the slithering slide of scales on sand.

She didn't mind snakes. They were like rocks that pretended to be sand. They were crunchy on the outside and smooth on the inside. And she knew they had rocks inside them because sometimes Mom would catch a little one and they could eat it like the bugs and lizards.

But Mom always said to be careful with snakes because they were sneaky and even a rock could hurt you if it was a snake rock.

Because snakes were sometimes full of poison water, and even the little ones could be faster than Ranishu.

So if you wanted to eat a snake, you had to get a bigger rock or a sharper rock or a rock that you could hit the snake on because if a snake caught you, it didn't need a bigger rock or a rock to hit you on. Snakes had sharp rocks built in.

Mom called them teeth, and she'd shown her where her teeth were and when she'd bit her tongue, she learned why you didn't let a snake bite you.

Not even the kinda that weren't full of poison water.

And even though you could eat the little snakes, there were snakes that were bigger that you didn't ever want to see.

Mom said that the dunes moved because there were snakes out there SO big, that when they slithered over the dunes, they pushed them around.

She thought the dunes moved because the Vulpera in them were trying to play with her, but Mom was sometimes right about those kinds of things, so she didn't play with snakes.

Just in case.

She'd seen a big snake once. It was bigger than Mom, and she'd told her to run and they'd run, but not to the rocks like the Ranishu races. They'd just run.

It was fast, like Mom had said, and it had nearly caught them as it came sliding down a dune, but they'd been able to scamper up the next while it had to kind of slide and crawl up the sand.

That's how she knew the Vulpera in the dunes were playing with the snake. They helped Mom and her get up to the top with little pockets where they stepped... their toes spreading out and holding the sand. The snake though? It slipped around and crawled, and even though it was fast, every once in a while, it would slip a bit when the sand of the dune slid down.

Once they'd gotten up top, they left it, even though it was hissing at them, flaring its hood and waving its spear. Mom promised it didn't want to play.

She saw a little rock move near her toes and was quick to pounce on it with all her strength.

It was a bug, not a snake, and she happily snapped it up and crunched it with her teeth. It was good, like most bugs were.

Mom showed her how to tell if it were a good bug or a bad bug.

The good ones didn't bite back.

She listened to the sands. There was sliding and crunching, and a little hissing, but no chittering. So it was probably a Krolusk.

They'd hunt them from time to time, if they got too close to the rocks or got too far from the salt flats.

Krolusks were crunchy and salty, and full of sharp bits. But, just like snakes, if you had a big enough rock or a sharp enough rock, you could get past the hard parts and once they stopped moving, you could open them up and get to the gooey good stuff inside.

But you had to be careful. Krolusks were like Ranishu that couldn't decide to really stop being rocks. Rocks that swam in the sand and ran on the rocks and ate everything they could catch. At least they weren't as fast as the Ranishu, and normally there were only one or two unless they had little Krolusks with them.

But they were tasty and just as dumb as the Ranishu, so it was okay to hunt them if you saw them before they saw you.

Also, the rocky parts of Krolusks made great stuff. Sometimes you could hunt snakes with Krolusk parts. Mom said they were like big, rocky, bugs called Lobsters that didn't need water. She'd never seen a Lobster, but Mom was pretty smart about things, so even if she didn't think the dunes were secretly full of Vulpera, she was probably right.

Lobsters, Mom said, were pretty good to eat as well.

She listened to the sands, and they were slidey and slithery, and thumpy and hissy.

She stilled her breath and stayed very still, because Mom was dealing with a snake that snuck up on them. She was hiding in the sands, and staying very still, and listening to the sands because the dunes talked to you if you listened hard enough.

The dunes told her that they were full of Vulpera.

She was Vulpera, and so was Mom.

But the dunes told her that tonight, Mom was staying in the dunes when the snake left.

And so, when the sands said it was quiet and she snuck out of the dunes, she knew she wouldn't find Mom, because the Ranishu were already racing and the snake was gone with its spear.


	3. Ruin 02 - Lifeline

The sands were hot under her toes, that was to be expected, but for the sand to be hot and wet... that was new.

Slowly, carefully, she lifted her foot, brushed a bit of dry sand over the paw print she'd left, and dropped to the ground to examine the oddly wet sand.

It was gritty, being sand, but also clung a bit more than usual. It held its shape but still crumbled when she prodded it experimentally. It was just a little darker than normal and she realized that after stepping in it, her foot now felt just the slightest bit cooler than the rest of her.

Magic then. Nothing else cooled things down in the dunes unless it was night.

Nodding to herself, she resolved to avoid the little strip of darker sand between the dunes. The coolness of her foot notwithstanding, very little good could come from magic you didn't understand. Resolved to avoiding it as such, she brushed her knees off and stood, scanning the slopes of the dunes with an explorers curiosity.

Here and there, little rocks made themselves known, tiny blemishes of solid color against the mottled glare of sand and sky. Lizards and beetles scurried about as well, basking or searching for a meal in the heat of the day. Overhead, a few of the bonepickers spun idly in the endless sky, though they seemed more concerned with something to the south than with troubling her.

Thankfully, none of the Ranishu seemed present... the last swarm had chased her for entirely too long for her liking and had only been put off by the arrival of a particularly large Krolusk. Though she'd been grateful, and a a touch interested in hunting the Krolusk herself, she'd decided to continue on and watch from a safe distance.

It had been a near thing, but despite its size and impressive kill count, the Krolusk had ultimately fallen. The Ranishu seemed unfazed by their losses and had torn both the Krolusk and their fallen to bits before sinking into the sands.

But, such was life in Voldune — such was life in the desert.

Picking up her weapon, a carefully wrapped Krolusk jawbone with a wicked barb at the end, she checked her surroundings again before starting up another dune.

There was a weight in the air that she didn't like. It pulled at her, resisted quick breaths, and left a strange tang on her tongue. There was something unnatural about it that tickled at the ghosts of a memory yet remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Still, better to follow a feeling than bake in the sun.

Cresting the dune, she stopped dead at what lay before her.

Down, down in the bowl between dunes, was a crack in the desert. An impossible crack, as if the desert itself had been broken and the dunes just didn't know what to do with it.

Sun baked dunes spilled down their sides, pooling between their rises, and seemed to fall endlessly in a shifting flow of shimmering heat before plunging into the crack. It was something that didn't make sense. It was something that seemed to be eating the desert itself.

It was something that she needed to see closer.

Carefully, tentatively, she padded down the slope, her Krolusk jaw tool ready in her hand, as she slowly made her way around the crack.

It was large. Larger than the big Krolusk she'd seen by at least five times. Uneven and ragged, the crack looked as if the desert had been pulled apart and left to bleed from the wound. Of course, that made no sense. Wounds bled OUT not IN, and anyway, sand continued to flow over the edge of the crack and was lost to the darkness below.

For a moment, she wondered if maybe she were inside of the desert, and the sands were its blood... the darkness where those sands would eventually scab over and heal.

It was a strange thought, but one she didn't dismiss. Strange thoughts were often worth exploring later, when it was safer.

She reached the shallow bowl of sand between the dunes, her toes just short of toasty in the heat of the day, before lowering herself to the ground and edging closer to look.

All around her sand shifted, seemingly not content to simply remain still. Tiny flows seemed to slide and crawl from all directions, their movements small but their collective migration deceptive in its current. Among the grains, tiny stones drifted, seemingly floating in the movement, but drawn along with the sands in a slow tumble towards the crack.

Seeing the flow up close, she inched back and looked for a larger rock to anchor herself. Curiosity or not, it wouldn't do to be carried away by a foolish mistake.

A length of string, a few spineleaf needles, and a rocky outcropping later, and she edged her way back towards the crack.

Sinking her fingers into the sand near its edge, she dug down, searching and sifting until her deft little claws found something to sink into. It was down, perhaps an inch or two, but unrelenting and rigid. Cool to the touch and marred with little pits, her mind immediately told her it was rock and not some hidden beast ready to devour her.

Rock was good. Rock was solid. Her assessment made, she flicked her ears around, took one last glance to make sure she wasn't being snuck up on, and peeked over the edge.

Black. Black rimmed with a shimmering curtain of golden sand falling into the darkness below.

She trained her ears on it, listening to the soft hiss of sand moving, of the breathy whisper of uncounted grains tumbling and bounding off one another. She listened as she watched, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dark below the sands.

And in that darkness, she saw the shimmer of motion.

The slow realization that the air felt even heavier there, that the tang was stronger, built until she drew a long breath and tasted the air itself.

Water. Water and salt and rock and sand. Cold water, hanging in the air, as it swallowed the desert in tiny little bites.

Licking her lips, she eased one hand free of the buried rock and felt for the edge of the crack.

It was sharp, hard and ragged. A raw feeling of newness alongside the worn warmth of ageless sand. Feeling along the edge though told her little she didn't already know.

Carefully, ever so carefully, she inched a bit further forward, reaching over the edge and feeling down the sharp sides of the crack.

It was cool, almost cold, to the touch, even with the hot sands pouring over the rim, and smooth like dried bone. The breath of cool air coming from the crack ruffled the fur of her face and caused her to squint just a bit. In a moment of realization, she glanced to the sands that seemed to constantly tumble over the edge, disturbed by the cool air coming from the gap and replaced by their neighbors from the dunes draining into the crack.

Licking her lips once more, she edged out over the crack before carefully turning and slipping one clawed foot over the edge to find a foothold.

With painstaking care, she slipped over the rim, turning her head and snuffling to blow the sand that tried to make her cough. Step by step, handhold by gritty handhold, she descended, a thin bit of knotted string her only 'safe' return to the desert above.

But the instant her ears found the shadow of the crack, she knew she had found something incredible.

The curtains of falling sand only fell down, but by climbing down the crack, the wall had pulled away from their vertical descent, bathing her in cool, damp, air. For a moment, she simply clung to the wall, gazing at the fall of sand, looking for all the world like a blazing column of gold as the sun lit it from above. The moment though, couldn't last forever. Her light frame, despite living her whole life out in the desert, was not made for extended climbs and her limbs were telling her they were working hard to keep her safe from a fall.

With no further delay, she slipped down the crack, carefully testing handholds as she went.

It took a few minutes, her slow decent, but when she found her last foothold touch moving water, she nearly let go by how startling it was.

It was quiet, the hissing fall of sand the only sound as the water flowed by with an eerie smoothness. Above, the crack looked to be more like a broken patch of daylight in the night sky, ringed with a golden halo of sand. Listening for any sounds of danger, she finally slipped her toes into the cold flow and felt for solid ground.

It wasn't deep at all.

Trailing her string, she set about sniffing the water, bottling some in a hollowed out bone, and after determining it safe enough, drank her fill.

It was salty, a bit sweet, and left a strange bitterness in her mouth, but it was water. Cold, clear, water. Water in a hidden patch of night under a broken desert.

Her mother would have loved it.

She explored carefully, always keeping the glowing patch of daylight in view, while she felt along the walls.

They were rough, broken rock, and slick with moisture. Here and there little roots escaped from the walls to blossom into webs of water sucking fibers. One or two she recognized, and taking the barb on her took, prized them free to eat.

Most were unknown, but any that had seeds or something she could imagine to be fruits, found their way into her bags. They might not be edible, but that didn't mean she couldn't find a use for them.

Slowly working her way around the space, she came to the conclusion that though it seemed like the desert had just opened up, there was a definite passage through the darkness. The water continued on, its silent flow carrying tiny amounts of sand with it.

There was a path it took; it was slow, and though she felt safe enough in following it, she knew she'd need more string before she could explore in earnest.

Reluctantly, she returned to the wall she had descended, winding her string as she went, and set to work on scaling the rough surface.

It took longer than she had thought, and though she had taken care to not injure herself, by the time she had pulled herself free of the cavern's cool embrace, the sun was beginning to slip below the dunes.

Taking care to cover her tracks, she climbed one of the encircling dunes and looked for any standing rocks.

The trek was longer than she would have liked, made longer by tired muscles and cooling temperatures, but when she finally curled herself safely in a crack below a larger boulder, she heaved a sigh of relief.

With a source of water, she could do more than without one. She wouldn't have to rely on lizards and bugs. She'd still need food, but where there was water, there would always be food. If not growing, then drinking.

Water was life in the desert, and despite what travelers might say, Voldune was alive.


	4. Ruin 03 - Shelter

As dusk fell she scampered over the crest of another seemingly endless dune. Searing golds and reds gave way to cooler grays and blues, the shadows racing across sun baked rock and sinuous sandy hills alike. Between the scorching heat of the ground and the wild, cloudless sky, she sped along on tiny padded feet.

The days were always hot and the nights were frequently quite chill, both equally dangerous. The desert was often still and even hauntingly beautiful, but on rare occasion, the transition from day to night brought with it a truly terrifying specter.

She glanced back, watching as dunes and scrub stirred restlessly. Dark patches of sky wavered and bled, their unrest almost physical. She swallowed quickly and continued a near panicked run down another dune before spying her goal faintly beyond the crest of another dune.

Out past the growing shadows, out across the salt basin, out just past where the Sethraki cultists had abandoned their strange metal spires, were the jutting ruins of some ancient structure. Stone, cut in huge blocks many times her own height, lay half exposed in the drift. Strange figures littered their surfaces, testament to whatever bizarre creatures had once called them home. Sharp ribs of weathered rock erupted as seeming random from those stalwart forms, beaten by sand and sun, but proud in their forgotten heritage. It was to those ruins she sped, hoping against hope that she might arrive before it caught her.

As she scrambled across the crest, a worn edge of dusty gray caught her eye and, without hesitation, she sprang upon the surface, wrenching it free from its sandy grave. Within moments, the wind was in her face as she set her claws to the plank of sun-rotted wood, skidding down the dune and saving precious seconds.

As she descended, she felt her heart clench, the distant form of the ruin slipping below the rising crest of the nearest dune.

She was close, and growing closer by the second, but the faint howl from the north promised no respite as the first touch of night fell.

Seemingly at once, the golds and reds of the setting sun faded to the blues and grays of a Voldune night. The air, still wavering with heat, stole what little moisture it could from her lips as she continued her descent to the trough between dunes.

Panting in fear, she sprang from the plank, leaving the wood behind in a nearly blind sprint to ascend the dune between her and salvation. A voice, half forgotten, screamed at her from some dark recess of her mind that wood was precious. Swore that it could be worked into tools. Promised that it could be used as a shelter. Pleaded that it could even just be traded, but with the lowing howl growing ever louder, she stomped down on that instinct with a determination born of the simple wish to survive.

Tools could be made. Shelters could be found. Goods could be bartered for or even stolen. Things were expendable.

She was not.

Hearing the chittering of something nearby, she nearly lost her footing as a pod of Ranishu emerged from the dunes less than twenty paces from her. Their beetle-like heads shining in the deepening night, but bright enough to shimmer as dozens scuttled and swarmed over one another. Teeth and claws, blistering spittle and stone-like carapaces alike all tumbled and roiled as they fought to outpace one another, for once not intent on eating anything in their path.

She continued her ascent as the howling continued to grow.

The warbling, croaking hiss of a Krolusk told her that the unseen beast had fallen behind somewhere. Its distress lost in moments to the rising volume of the howl.

With a leap that spoke of years in the sands, she crested the dune and dropped to all fours for more stability as she poured what speed she still had to drive herself faster down the opposite face. The air grew colder as she went, and for a split second she cursed herself for not keeping the plank.

Those thoughts ended as she heard the screeching screams of the Ranishu that she'd left behind. The dune, before she had crested it, had seemed almost alive in a carpet of teeth and claws as they had been fighting to escape. Hearing their screams in the night being swallowed and growing silent was something she refused to think on.

Pouring on more speed, she felt her hands and toes chapping, splitting, as her sprint stretched and pulled the delicate skin beneath. No soft fur or leathery pads could realistically resist the sands when pushed so, but she could bear the pain if it meant escaping that thunderous howl.

The ruins were there, just ahead, their massive forms rising from the sands like a bastion in the night. Scattered across their foundations, time and the elements had torn gaps in the otherwise impregnable fortress, and it was to these she hurried.

The air had become thick, the twilight of night falling into the blistering winds that promised a grim demise. Hacking and panting, she darted across the half exposed flagstones before lunging into a hollow between two fallen stones. Pressing herself deeper and deeper, shedding the scraps of cloth she used as protection from the elements, she stole precious inches from her form and slipped deeper into the cracks.

Within moments, her world was black, the wailing howl of the hungry sky tearing at her senses as she clutched her ears and curled her tail around herself as tightly as she could.

She was safe there. She was safe from the hungry sky. She was safe from the burning winds. She was safe from the thirsting haze and the blistering cold.

Her paws bled. Her lips cracked. Her fingers cramped as she clutched her ears, desperately trying to muffle the whistling howl that reached her even there, deep within the ruin of some forgotten temple or city or market. Deep within her coffin, her fortress in the night, she screamed, her voice lost in the howling that tore at the stone without tiring. Naked and alone, silent in the tempest, heart hammering in her tiny chest, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

And even though she knew not when, sometime in the night, she fell asleep as the howling continued.

She awoke to silence.

Her body ached. Her throat was on fire and her paws felt too tight. Her back and neck refused to move without sending shuddering spasms through her limbs. Her arms were taunt and even her tail felt cramped, tucked as it was against the unforgiving walls of her minuscule fortress.

Breathing hurt, so she stopped for a moment.

Not breathing hurt as well... and since, on the balance, breathing was preferable, she resumed her old addiction.

Slowly, painfully, she turned in her tiny slice of midnight, worming herself around until she was facing her point of entry.

Blackness. Not a hint of light.

But it was a quiet blackness, and that spoke well of her flight.

That it was silent meant she had escaped. That she hurt meant she was alive. That it was black meant that she was protected.

Surrounded by stone on five sides, entombed with sand and discarded gear, she slowly worked her tail, and then her legs, free of their cramped positions.

Her tongue was rough and dry, and she was thankful she couldn't taste anything at the moment. Her fingers refused to open all the way, glued partially shut with dried blood and sand. She could feel the fur across her body matted and pulling oddly in a dozen places and she felt the telltale burn in her paws of scabs tearing from movement.

Taking a moment to calm herself, she realized she was panting and snapped her mouth shut. Losing what little water she had to the air would be a fools way to die, and she hadn't escaped the angry sands just to dig her own grave.

So with agonizing slowness, she began to work herself free.

First was the crack, clogged with her things. A trace of cloth, more scraps than actual fabric, was pulled from the dark, it's texture worn and ragged. Next came some loose rags, twisted and bunched where she'd kicked them free in her scramble to escape. Once, they had been wraps for her paws, for when the sands were too hot even for her, reduced now to potential kindling. A few scraps of bone and a dried bulb. Some seeds and a rare twist of fish, nearly petrified by the unrelenting heat. A gourd the size of her palm, once filled with water and the sharp edged jaw of a Krolusk with a tangled wad of string.

All of her worldly possessions, gathered together in the dark.

She pushed past them and began to dig, burying them in sand as she tried to work her way free.

The sand was cool, almost cold on her aching fingers. Softly and carefully, she worked her way forward, kicking the loose sand back as she inched her way forward.

Hand after hand, inch after inch, grain after grain, she toiled in the dark.

She hadn't survived just to die.

When she didn't think about it too much, it wasn't really too bad. Just another day playing in the sand. It was dark in the sand, something that had always confused her when she was younger. How could it be DARK in the sand? The sands were always in the sun! Even at night, you could see the sand because it was brighter than the sky. But under the sand? That's where the night slept.

She had been sure of it.

But that was what children thought. That was how children had to think. When something was lost or someone didn't come back, they must simply be busy or having an adventure.

She wasn't a child. She knew what the desert was.

The desert was full of life, life that fed on death. The sands were to be respected.

Ironically enough, her naive belief that the sands were full of Vulpera had turned out to be true. Just not in the way she had originally thought.

After all, anyone who was lost in the dunes would eventually succumb to them. The sands ~were~ full of Vulpera, but she wasn't planning on joining them just yet.

A claw poking free of the sand sent a lance of muted amber light stabbing into her eyes, and though it sent a fresh wave of pain through her, she surged forward to freedom.

But the world she escaped into was starkly different from that which she had left behind.

The landscape was changed. Rolling dunes had been replaced with languid swells. The rocky landmarks on the horizon were stolen by a thick, cloying, haze that hid everything beyond a few yards. The ruins, a seemingly immortal structure, were a mere suggestion of form under the lumpy drifts that continued to swallow their foundations. Even the hole she had emerged from was collapsing into itself as she watched.

Turning, she set her ragged paws to work, balancing as she dug back into her shelter. Throwing sand, slowly working her way back, she excavated her tiny stone burrow and liberated her possessions from the deserts grip.

An hours labor and she finally rested, head poking out of the tiny gap in a drift, half submerged in sand, and watched as the dim light of the sun stole through the haze.

Silently, she sucked on a piece of nearly mummified fish as she cheated the sands for another day.


	5. Ruin 04 - Something

The dunes were fresh and new, landmarks swallowed by the change in the familiar. Instead of glancing to the north to look for the spires or the East towards the rocky bluffs, there were ripples in a featureless field of sand. Instead of peering to the west, towards the far off coast and seeing the reddish spine of stone that broke free and rose to a temple of snakes, there was just more sand. To the south, there had already been sand. Sand with a massive pyramid of golden stone, but sand none the less. Of the four directions, only the spires to the north and the pyramid to the south were even visible, and even then, the change in the dunes made identifying them difficult.

Snorting a bit of sand from her nose, she flexed her fingers before beginning the careful process of removing the scabs from her fur.

It was uncomfortable, the scabs fused with sand made the act unpleasant and left grit in her mouth, and the fresh air on newly knitting skin burned all the more, but it was something that had to be done. Leaving things in ones fur meant that other things could take up residence there. It was more important to clean a wound than to leave it to heal as fast as it could. A dozen small cuts would heal better than one larger one left on its own and cleaning a wound left a smaller injury each time but prevented infection.

Small wonder she could map her life in the scars beneath her fur.

Still, even though it stung, it was a little thing. Things. They were little things compared to what the Ranishu suffered. She knew there were more of them, there always were, but those particular Ranishu? They had lost the race.

That Krolusk had as well, and though it was a long shot, she wanted to see if she could find it. It had sounded rather large, and if she were lucky, if she were very lucky, she might be able to make use of what was left.

At least she wouldn't have to fight the Ranishu for it. Not those ones at least.

Blinking in the half-light of the haze, she shook out the scraps of cloth she'd managed to save from her burrow. They were torn and threadbare in places, evidence of her harried escape and subsequent abuse by the sands, but they were also the cleanest things she had.

It would be hard but she had lived in the dunes her entire life. She would manage.

Carefully folding the scraps over, doubling and even tripling their thickness in places, she bandaged her hands and paws as best she could.

They wouldn't be mistaken for shoes or gloves by any stretch of the imagination, but they would at least keep the worst of the sand from her injuries until she could clean them again. They would last, at most, three days if she shifted how they were wrapped... and after that? After that, their only real used would be as tinder.

Licking dry lips, she stretched before kicking her leg out and scratching her ear furiously.

Sand.

Sand in her ears.

Her mother had been right, it got everywhere.

If it hadn't been so quiet, she might have laughed at the thought. Still, if she could laugh, even in her head, it was a good sign.

Sitting down with her back to the sliver of stone that made up the entry to her fortress of ruin, she began working the tangled wad of string free of itself.

String, cordage of any kind, was worth its weight in trade. It would bind, cast, alert, lead, bar, drag, and many other things. Cordage was valuable, but only if it was orderly. A tangle, a snag, could get caught in something. A knot could be seen more readily than a fine string. A ball of fluff might even burn well enough to start a fire, but a snip of string could wick fat from a meal and be made into a tallow lantern.

Cordage needed to be orderly to be worth anything.

And so she worked and picked and needled, even biting and using all four of her paws to spread the mess out until, finally, she had managed to untangle the last of the knots.

Looping it around her foot, she carefully wound the string up, taking care to flip the loop every other pass so she could release it quickly if she needed.

A final loop and she pulled it tight, a bound coil of string, ready to be used.

The gourd, she slipped in among the coils, using the string to fashion a handle which she secured to the Krolusk jawbone. She picked at the seeds before popping them in her mouth and savoring the slightly nutty oil. She had snatched them from some rather aggressive plants and found they had been tasty enough to keep.

With everything gone, they were no longer snacks. They were food.

She pondered what use the bulb might be. It was too dry to bloom, but too valuable to leave. It might be edible, if she could soften it up somehow, but it was also something she'd have to carry. Ultimately she fashioned a little spike from one of the bone chips and managed to drill a small hole in the husk, threading it along a bit of her string, and adding it to her meager possessions.

With nothing left of worth, she dusted herself off, checked her bandages, and started off across the changed face of Voldune. Somewhere out there, to the south and maybe a bit west, was her little crack in the sands. If she could find that, she would undoubtedly find water. If she found water, everything else would come to her. If she could find her little slice of night, she would be fine.

But first, she would check for the Krolusk. If it was large enough, it might still be visible and the buzzards tended to work their way across a carcass over the course of days. It would still be fresh enough that they might only be watching it, and if that was the case, she could take what she wanted and leave the vultures happy enough when she left.

Flicking her tail in the growing heat of the day, she slung her Krolusk jaw with its string and gourd and bulb across her back before lowering herself to all fours and scampering off across the hot sands.

The sands didn't care if she were naked or clothed, healthy or dead, but the sooner she could find water, the less likely she would lose a say in the matter.

She wandered for only an hour or so before coming across the Krolusk. The sands were so alien that she nearly missed its shape before a shadow caused to her to leap aside, fearing an attack.

Seconds passed before she noticed the muffled wing beats of the giant carrion birds above.

She knew they were mostly harmless, reluctant to fight when a meal was just as tasty when it was already dead, but their shear size always put her on edge.

They were huge things, bodies larger than her own and with wingspans that dwarfed anything but the largest of predators in the dunes. Hooked beaks and wicked talons completed their image as nightmarish terrors. If she had to fight one of the soaring monsters or bed down with a Krolusk, in her mind, it was an even bet.

A Krolusk, after all, tasted delicious if prepared well.

Still, the circling of the buzzards had hinted at the location of a food source and it hadn't taken long at all to find it.

The Krolusk had been huge, easily seven or even eight times her size, with thick plates of bony armor. It's jaws were wedged open where it had smashed against a half buried rock. Of its numerous spear-like legs, only a few remained, testament to how sturdy it had been. Where flesh had been exposed, deep, meaty, pits gaped while caked in salty sand.

She watched it for a few minutes, careful of the lure of an easy meal. To a predator, such a prize could be eaten and feed them for quite some time. To a crafty predator though, such a beast could be turned to lure other, smaller, snacks and greatly extend its value. In the end, the Krolusk would be eaten either way, but she had no desire to be something else's snack first.

Eventually, the noisome cries of the buzzards were enough to erode her caution and she proceeded to hack and tear at the carcass until her fur was red with its blood.

Food was food, but a Krolusk was so much more than just food.

She worked her claws under its armored skin, worrying a few plates free. She carved the fatty meat from under those plates and laid them out in the sun. Using her Krolusk Jaw bone, she sawed through some of the legs and strung them together to make a tunic. She drank her remaining water before gouging it's eyes and refilling her gourd with the juices. Cuts of meat joined the fat on back-plates, slowly withering in the mid day heat.

And through it all, she ate.

Food was life in the desert, moreso for the Vulpera than for others.

She didn't need water, water was a luxury, but she did need food. She could go days without food, but she could go weeks without water as long as she could hunt.

And a Krolusk of that size? Without competition? That would feed her for weeks... months if she were careful.

But she needed more than that.

With a clean kill, she could dry the meat and use the bone. She could work the plates into tools or even a shelter. She could trade the organs or eat them for their nutrients. A Krolusk like that could mean the difference between living or dying.

And she did not intend to die.

So, for the next few hours, she worked her way through the beast, cutting and separating, laying things bare and working to make things from what was left. By the time she was ready to leave, she had eaten half her weight in fresh meat, felt uncomfortably full, and was pleasantly certain that she could not have fit into her clothes if they had still existed.

Still, a meal like that would only last her as long as she could stay ahead of other denizens of the sands, so she groomed herself carefully, left enough meat and fat to sate the buzzards, and continued on into the evening light with a pack of dried meat, several bundles of hide wrapped fat, several long bones, and enough plates of Krolusk armor to build a shelter wherever she ended up.

And as dusk fell, her only complaint as she curled up under a dome of armored bone, was that her stuffed belly prevented her from properly tucking her nose under her tail.


	6. Ruin 05 - Mistaken p 1

The sands were cool on her skin, the Krolusk tunic a bit uncomfortable after falling asleep, and yet she couldn't remember the last time she had felt quite so secure. Under a dome of armored plates, shaded from what she guessed was the mid-day sun, and now only comfortably overfull, she yawned wide as she stretched her legs.

For the first time in quite a while, she lingered, luxuriating in the feeling of being safe, having her needs met, and not feeling hungry.

Under her dome, she had little to fear of the buzzards... no more than the large Krolusk from which she had torn the plates. In the dark, she was cool and protected from the blistering heat of mid-day. With her strings of meat, fat, and dried organs, she had little to no need to actually consider hunting for a while. And having all that food, she wouldn't need to look for water for quite some time.

Granted, water from a pure source would be welcome, but she didn't actually need any as long as she had the fat and organ meats. Even when dried, they would hold enough liquid for a vulpera twice her size... and she had remembered to drain the Krolusk's eyes for their fluids which would keep for a week or more.

So, under no pressure to do much of anything in the heat of the day, she stretched out, fluffed her tail to find a more comfortable position, and rolled over. Any task that she could think of seemed blatantly easier to do in the cool of the night.

Hunting? Cool sands and drowsy snacks just waking from a day of napping. Securing a shelter? Completely pointless with the dome of armored plates she was currently within. Scavenging? Less glare and larger predators tended to need more light than the vulpera. Finding water? Water dried up faster in the sun, so later would be better anyway.

With her concerns appropriately put at ease, she stretched again, rolled on to her back, and reached up to pluck a chunk of meat from one of the strings hanging across the inside of the dome.

While she didn't have anything to do or anywhere to be, her lips split into a small smile. Food was a fleeting thing... but at that moment, she was literally surrounded by a very valuable commodity. So she did what anyone who made a habit of living paw to mouth would do in such a situation.

She ate herself sick and fell asleep with a terrible bellyache.

-~oOo~-

Being shaken awake before being struck about the ears was not a thing she had ever experienced prior, and as such her instinctive response to curl into a ball and yelp at the abuse could be forgiven. Being a vicious little mongrel the moment she realized she was under attack? That was much less forgivable in the eyes of her attacker.

No sooner had the yelp ended than she had uncurled and scrabbled to her paws, puffed out her coat and leapt as a hissing, snarling, mass directly upon the scaled form of the Sethrak that had struck her.

Tooth and claw, elbows, knees and fists, her whole world momentarily shrank down to the need to get away in the most expedient way possible.

Her initial response had startled the snake creature, causing it to stumble back on uncertain footing while its tail had snapped out to try and counterbalance its fall. Hooded with its scaled skin and loosely wrapped in airy fabric, it wouldn't have normally looked terribly threatening, but to her eyes, startled from sleep and in an unfamiliar place, the scent of a fresh kill soaking every inch of the space, it appeared much more dangerous than otherwise.

A quick glance showed chunks of meat strung across the walls and ceiling, the tiny place looking more like some butchered creatures insides than a room. With another stab of panic, she scrabbled across the startled Sethrak's head and launched herself towards a tangle of string and meat above, dropping many of the bloody chunks upon her assailant as the strings broke.

Unfortunately, while distracting, the act of breaking the strings simultaneously acted to drop her to the ground as well, stunning her as her unexpected fall caused her to meet the rising Sethrak's spear handle with her chin.

Blinking at the swimming blobs of darkness, she barely even noticed as a pair of firm, clawed, hands wrapped around her neck and tail, lifting her before carrying her through a rough gap in the room and out into the blinding light of day.

Dizzy and struggling to breathe, she fell almost limply when her attacker threw her into a cage of pitted metal and bone.

The hissing snarl it made as the door was closed and locked only served to drive home the moment of confusion before the nausea and landing managed to make her vacate her overfull belly.

Aching and weakened from her dinner's return trip, she lay half-sprawled across the rocky bottom of a cage wrought from the bones of some unlucky creature and whatever metal the Sethrak had apparently found littered across the desert.

It had happened so fast, she still wasn't certain it was real.

Comfortable darkness then pain and confusion, motion and fear. So much confusion. What had happened? HOW had it happened? Where was she?

Too much to handle at the moment, she closed her eyes and curled into a ball, clutching her aching stomach. From too full to landing bodily upon it after being hurled into a cage, her insides ached and convulsed while her head and back throbbed from the blows. The stinging scent of bile and blood clung to her and only served to make her twisting gut writhe all the more.

It had been stupid, eating that much. She had known it. She had known it then and she knew it now. But food was so rare that when it was available, one had to make the most of it. It had been a gamble... one that she was paying for. One that she might be paying for for a long time.

Or maybe not... the Sethrak were traders, she knew... but the cultists, the Faithless as they called themselves, were of another breed. Cold and callous, they were slavers and marauders, deadly assassins and merciless but cunning foes.

Cracking an eye open as she felt the cage jostle into motion, she spied a creaking sled of some sort lashed to the back of a larger Krolusk being ridden by the sinuous hooded form of a Sethrak.

Weakly, she turned her head to gaze out across the sands, between the slats that made up the sleds walls, and saw two other Sethrak tearing apart a rough dome of Krolusk plates.

She stared at the sight as the sled drew her further from the Sethrak who continued to pull apart the dome, tossing plates aside into piles and snapping up lumps of meat from within. Something screamed at her, fanned her anger at the sight. Something was bitter at even witnessing it.

And when her throbbing head finally put together the scene, she could only bare her teeth and snarl as tears leaked from her clenched eyes.

They were systematically tearing apart her home, eating her food, and destroying the only life she had ever known.

-~oOo~-

The trip had been uncomfortable and her captor had been harsh. She had been left to stew in the sweltering heat for hours as the sled had slid along between sand and gravel. A scrap of threadbare cloth had been tied across two poles at the head of the sled and provided a weak bit of shade when they traveled in the right direction. It hadn't offered food or water, though given the mess across the bottom of her cage, there was little reason to believe she had needed any.

When they stopped to water the Krolusk, the Sethrak had glanced back, flicked its forked tongue and given a tiny reptilian smile before slapping the beast, causing it to turn the sled just enough that the shade from the cloth lay a foot from her cage.

It had been needlessly cruel, she thought, until he had turned to walk away and she noticed the small tapestry of scabs that danced over his hood.

Despite the misery of slowly baking in the sun, she smiled with the knowledge that she had at least helped to make her captor's life uncomfortable.

Hours passed in this way, silence and exposure followed by brief stops to care for the animal. The Sethrak would check on her only enough to ensure she was still awake, jabbing her brutally with the butt of its spear if she seemed too listless. It was painful, a sapping weakness that heat and injury continued to fill her with.

After a while, she found she could predict when they would stop next and started to make an effort to appear more awake, even when her vision swam from sitting up.

Eventually, sometime in the early evening, the sound of muted cracks and booms began to echo across the dunes, causing her ears to perk.

They were nearing a large basin of some sort, glimpsed briefly as her cage crested a rise before starting to descend once more. She could feel a stinging dust when a feable breath of wind parted the fur on her face, and tasted a bitter salt. Squinting into the falling sun, she curled herself as much as she could to cover her face and eyes, waiting to see where she was being taken.

Minutes passed as the popping crashes grew louder, the sun finally slipping below a jagged horizon before they crested a final dune and began their descent. There, nestled between the dunes, was a basin hemmed in on three sides by rough red rock with a dusty white sand that seemed to settle and harden between them.

Bleached bone and armored plates jutted from the cracked flats at odd intervals while bonepickers and buzzards alike fought over the brittle remains. Krolusk roamed those sands, their armored shells bleached and pitted with the same salt that seemed to cover everything in sight, and fought visciously with one another as they stole from the other scavengers or simply tore them apart to consume.

Thick barrelled hyena snarled and stole from anything they could while a few roaming packs of ranishu swarmed over anything unlucky enough to not see their approach.

She stared at the nightmare outside her cage, glancing at the Sethrak who simply cracked a whip at the Krolusk that drew his sled.

Nothing could live out there, certainly no vulpera at least. They were quick and clever but, against that many hostile predators and scavengers, she wouldn't stand a chance. Not even with proper weapons. Not even with a dozen vulpera would she stand a chance. There were simply too many things with teeth and claws, with beaks and talons and endless hungers.

She watched at they drew closer and closer, before drawing herself to the very center of her cage and remaining very very still.

Those monsters did not approach the sled, either from training or fear, but she didn't want to draw their attention in case they decided a delicate morsel like herself was worth the risk of the Sethrak's whip.

She had just started to calm her racing heart when her fur stood on end and a tight tingling feeling crawled across her skin.

Moments later, the sky erupted in a blue white fire as lightning exploded off to the north, only several hundred feet away, into one of the Sethrak's strange metal spires.

Later, she would deny that she had wet herself in her cage.


	7. Ruin 06 - Mistaken p 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her capture, our little vulpera wakes. This does not normally require quite as much thought.

Waking up in a pile of damp sand was not something she had ever made a habit of. Normally, if one slept on sand, they would wake on sand. If the sand had been dry, it would still be dry. If the sand had been wet, you wouldn't sleep on it. Sand got everywhere, and damp sand clung to things and places that not even dry sand would. Damp sand was decidedly less than ideal for sleeping on.

Of course, all of that meant nothing the moment she tried to lift her head only to find a heavy shackle clamped loosely around her neck.

True, being beaten, thrown in a cage, baked under an unrelenting sun, kept awake, and then shown the countless hungry mouths that would like nothing more than to tear her into tiny, no doubt tasty, bits, rather did put things in perspective. That being said, all things the same? She could have done without the shackle.

Or the damp sand... definitely could do without the damp sand.

Initially, she remained still, feeling her heartbeat speeding up as she tried not to panic. She was in a dark place. Warm, but almost cold by comparison to the sun she had suffered through. She was sore, but didn't feel anything agonizing, so she probably hadn't broken any bones or lost any important bits while she was unconscious. Just to make sure, she carefully flexed her fingers and toes, curling them until she could count all sixteen as being present. Her tail was damp, so she knew that was still there and her ears felt like they'd been pinned against the ground for a good while.

All in all, she was almost positive she had all her important parts and that since they all seemed sore, she was probably still alive.

Still, being alive did not explain where she was.

Being careful not to move her head or ears, she studied the limited view of her little slice of darkness.

The ground was stone, worn smooth from time and travel. No obvious tool marks, but a definite sense of purpose from the wear. A decent bit of space, probably a good fifteen second run to the nearest wall she could see. Scattered bits of wood and well used fire pits and braziers. She could also spot what looked like small tents and stalls, piled high with goods both simple and splendorous. A few cushions, perhaps a wagon's worth of dried fish and jerked meats, cords of spices and even what looked like small jugs stoppered and sealed with a dark something.

Small forms shifted slightly near a number of the stalls, each baring a wide shackle and thick chain that linked to couplings driven into the stone of floor or wall.

So, she thought, there were others. It wasn't just her.

Taking a few more moments to listen for attack, she slowly slipped into a crouch and braced herself for another ambush.

When after a few moments, none came, she shook herself off, jangling her chain and sending a small cloud of dust and sand into the air. This had the unintended side effect of getting in her nose and bringing with it a sneeze.

Still, a good shake was wonderful for getting rid of damp sand, not to mention getting her tail to fluff back up and help it dry a bit faster.

Of course, when she looked around again, several twin points of light were scattered across the darkness around her, and it took her entirely too many seconds to realize they were eyes.

Falling back into a defensive crouch, she bared her teeth and puffed up at large as she could. She was shackled, naked, confused, and slightly damp, but she was vulpera... and vulpera didn't do scared.

At least, she kept telling herself that as one by one, the eyes either drifted a little closer or winked out.

It wasn't until she heard the metallic clink of chains that she put the eyes and forms near the tents together, and upon doing so, she instantly felt her coat and ears flatten.

They were, of course, other captives. Prisoners. Slaves.

Not taking her eyes off the shadowy figures, she reached for her chain and gave it a light tug. When it failed to shift further than required to rattle and clink more, she simply took a step closer to the spike that secured her chain to the ground.

It was rough, pitted iron if she had to guess, with signs of long use and wear. Rust seemed to have been worn into the metal itself, visible and yet not the crumbly dry stuff she was used to seeing on weathered tools. There was an almost wet look to it and, when her nimble fingers felt over a link, a waxy smoothness. The links were easily as thick as her wrist, however, pretty much laughing at even the idea of breaking the chain.

Huffing in frustration, she lowered the chain as she watched the other slaves study her.

They were shorter than the Sethrak, though still taller than herself, and scattered about the cavern. Here and there, she could hear them moving about, just out of sight, while the ones before her seemed to duck out of sight occasionally. Interestingly enough, she didn't see any Sethrak in the place, though that could simply be because they were all chained securely and didn't need an actual jailer.

She watched them, carefully weighing her options if it came to combat, and deciding that if she were to be attacked, her chain might be her best chance for survival. What held you down could also be drawn tight... and with so little room, a tight chain would certainly be enough to break bone or be used to brace against an attack.

So, when something landed near her feet, in her surprise, she leapt back and nearly landed of her face when the chain drew short.

Scrambling in a near panic, she got back to her paws and crouched low, snarling at the unseen assailant until a greasy scent caught her nose and caused her to look at the ground where she had been.

Creeping tentatively closer, a black lump rested on the stone confusing her before realization struck and caused her to look up.

Fish. It was lump of oily, stinking, smoked fish.

Blinking but feeling her mouth salivating, she licked her parched lips before nabbing the morsel and darting back to the length of her chain to nearly inhale the meat.

A few soft murmurs in the dark caused her ears to swivel, searching for their origins before snapping to the sound of something scraping not far away.

A few more seconds and a brilliant amber flame sparked to life, revealing a dust colored vulpera cupping a twist of burning cloth in a hollowed out gourd.

"Hey there little one. No one's gonna hurt you here," said the stranger with the fire, a gentle smile on her face before she glanced around in the now dimly lit cavern and hid her little chip of flint. "At least not until the Faithless come back with one of the ropes." She paused and reached behind herself to pull something from the ground before tossing it over. "Name's Tass. Welcome to our little community."

Watching "Tass" with more than a little wariness, she crouched down and checked the thing that had been tossed her way. As soon as she smelled it, she immediately snapped up the newest little lump of smoked fish.

More quiet murmurs from the dark caused her to glance around before Tass's voice drew her attention. "Hey now. Give her a break. She's young and clearly doesn't know any better. I'm talking to you, Reid. Might not even know how to talk... gots the look of an orphan. Might not even know what we're saying, and you know they'll treat her like an animal if we don't get her help right quick."

She glanced around and noticed a few other sets of eyes watching now. So many eyes. Dozens of them... and from the sounds of things, all vulpera.

"So, how about it, little one. You understand me? Got a name?" came the softer voice of Tass from across the way.

She hesitated, licking her lips as she thought back across sand and sun and moon and krolusks and ranishu and bonepickers and snakes and lizards and.... so, so much more.

She licked the smokey oil from her lips, licked her fingers clean, and blinked in the darkness as she searched through all those things.

She thought back, listening to all the little voices in the sands. She picked through the night sky for hints. She listened to the winds and the falling of rocks and the little squeals of lizards as she bit them in half before she swallowed them. She tried to find the smell of a voice or the feel of a sound that would uncover the thing that would tell her what she was looking for. And the longer she thought, the more the gentle smile on Tass' face started to fall. As the seconds ticked by without answer, Tass finally sighed and shook her head before tossing another lump of smoked fish over with a saddened little smile.

"Damn... too young. Damn." Tass glanced behind her before flopping down and propping the little gourd lamp up next to her, its amber flame playing shadows across the cavern ceiling.

Those shadows danced and darted, reminding her of how she used to think there were vulpera hiding in the sand so very long ago. Her imagination tugging at the tattered edges of memories she'd set aside to make room for what she had to learn, for what she had to know. She swallowed and licked her lips again as she reached for the lump of fish and paused.

Did she have a name? What had mother called her? Precious? Beautiful? Her little sand pearl? Those weren't names... those were what she was called... but they weren't her name.

Sitting back into a crouch, the fish in her paws forgotten as she studied Tass from across the way, a resigned but gentle look settling over dusty features as the other vulpera rubbed her face and sighed. A few moments passed before Tass sat back up and smiled softly, a slightly sad look on her face.

"It's alright little one. We'll take care of you. You don't have to worry about anyth-"

"I..." she scratched out, her throat rough and voice unpracticed, "I'm..."

Tass's ears perked up and her eyes snapped to hers with a predator's focus.

"I don't.... remember," she hacked out, dropping the fish and pawing at her throat, the shackle feeling suddenly all too tight.

"Don't worry too much about it, little one. It's not your fault. Hey... shhhh... shhhh.... it's okay. It's okay. You'll be okay."

More mumbling and quiet whispers echoed around the cavern, but at that point, she didn't care.

It was too tight on her neck. How could she have forgotten her own name? It wouldn't come off. How could she have forgotten something so personal, so uniquely her own? She needed it off off off!

And as she curled into a ball,coughed out her sobs and raked her claws over the shackle, she wondered... what else had she forgotten that she would never get back. What else had she lost?

All alone, surrounded by strangers whispering soft words of encouragement, she cried herself to sleep pawing weakly at her shackle, a small lump of fish forgotten like the memory of her name: just out of reach.


	8. Ruin 07 - Family p1

The clinking of chain was the only warning she got before being yanked to her feet by way of her neck.

Wide eyed and panicking at being touched, let alone handled so roughly with no warning, she had no time to prepare for what came next. Already gasping for air, feet flailing in the air as she was held aloft by her shackle, a heavily wrapped fist drove itself into her belly before she found herself slammed into the floor.

Dazed and straining to draw even a partial breath, she stayed as still as possible as a raspy voice whispered darkly over her ear.

"Welcome to your new life. Let this lesson serve you well. Do as you are told or broken ribs and missing limbs will be the least of your worries, slave."

Without waiting for a reply, she felt her face bounce against the stone again before the pressure released her to curl into a ball and ride out the pain.

Moments later, she heard a yelp and a similarly worded threat being given to another occupant of their dark little cavern.

She listened carefully as she recovered, counting off the threats against the hissed commands to those who had woken without their 'help.' All in all, she counted seven threats (including her own) and five more hissed warnings. Twelve vulpera in chains.

She wanted to snarl, to leap at the filthy snake and tear its hood from its neck. She wanted to claw its eyes out and spill its insides onto the sand. She wanted to cut its fingers from its scaled arms and throw them to the ranishu just so she could watch its terror as it realized what she had done.

But she was small and weak, and no matter how hurt, how insulted, how angry she was, she was also chained to the ground, naked, and no match for one, let alone several, full grown Sethrak.

The feeling left a bitter taste that she couldn't entirely attribute to her bout of forced nausea the previous day.

A quiet clicking from the dark broke her thoughts from their spiral as her ears spun to find it.

A few moments to confirm the Sethrak were elsewhere in the cavern and she turned to search the shadows for the source of the clicking.

It didn't take long to realize where it was coming from.

"Good to see you're an early riser. They don't give many chances on that," came Tass's whispered words. "They'll be back in a minute to give you some water and a bit of something to eat. Don't think about it too much and don't complain. Just take your scraps and let them move on. They've done this the last three days... so we'll probably be marched out or carted off in another day or two. Just... look. Keep your head low and don't give them a reason to remember you. We lost Sheem coming across the red rocks... they got tired of having to 'motivate' him... so they marched him past a Dune Crawler mound and used him as a warning to the rest of us. They're heartless."

Tass's voice abruptly went quiet just as her ears warned her of the return of one of the Sethrak.

Within moments, a dull slap spoke of something hitting the floor nearby, causing her to pull her arms up protectively. The humored snort-hiss of the Sethrak continued as it went on to the next, callously dropping another lump of damp matter for the slave before slinking off.

Tentatively, she sniffed at the lump, nose wrinkling at the first faint hints of decay, before telling her that she could technically eat it.

It was oily, fibrous, and clearly not meat of any kind she could remember. It clung to the fur of her hands and a mucousy slime carried sand and grit to her mouth as she choked it down. Of flavor, they was mercifully little, only having a slightly salty, bitter aftertaste that lingered on her tongue and breath.

All in all, a distasteful meal, but hardly the worst she'd ever eaten.

Taking a few moments to clean her paws, she barely noticed when the whispered words of Tass reached her ears, clearly in conversation with another unseen vulpera.

"I told you, she's young. Just let her be. She doesn't know any better."

"And I told you, she's TOO young. She's barely even alive as it is. You saw her gulp that down. Probably doesn't even know what food tastes like."

"Then she'll do better than most."

"She's feral, Tass. Ferals don't last in captivity. You know that. It doesn't matter how much you want it, she'll end up chewing her leg off if they give her a reason and she'll bleed to death or... or pant out all her water in a panic."

"You don't know that! She's so small. She doesn't know any better! If we don't do something, they'll just kill her or eat her while she sleeps. Monsters... that's what these faithless are. Not like the traders."

"..."

"You know it's true. They're not the same. The Sethrak weren't always like this. They used to wander and trade just like we did... something's changed."

"Yheah... the rocks. But that doesn't change a thing about her."

"You know it's not right. We have to help her. She deserves better."

"We can't help every little thing out there."

"Don't call her a thing."

"She doesn't even know her name, Tass! Might not even know what a name is. She's feral, or as close to it as you can get. It's sad, but she's probably already half dead if she can choke that filth down like she did."

"We don't give up on each other. Vulpera are strong... we're quick and clever... we'll find a way out of this."

The whispered conversation continued on in little bouts as she thought on things.

What was the Faithless? What rocks? Who was Tass arguing with? What was feral?

And... was she?

-~oOo~-

It hadn't taken long for the Sethrak to come back, a long pole with a rough hook on the end in hand. She hadn't understood initially, but after he had swung it towards her, she'd leapt back on reflex.

That had been a mistake. He had apparently anticipated her jump, knowing she was shackled where she had forgotten in the moment. The end result was that when she leapt back, she'd abruptly run out of chain and been yanked to the ground, only to be held down by the pitted end of the hook he held.

Within moments, her chain had been looped around the hook and he'd unlocked the chain from the floor.

She had, of course, fought the tether, clawing and biting at the chain and hook, but the length was such that she couldn't reach him and the metal was far more resilient than her panicked biting.

Not that non-panicked biting would have fared any better against metal... but she still felt foolish when he'd simply given the hook a yank and started to tug her along.

A few more rough yanks and shoves at the end of the hook and she found that the snake's body gave tiny little tells just before he yanked on the chain or shoved or knocked her aside with the hook. There were a few little muscles that would tense just before he'd pull the chain, a few scales near his shoulders that would shift before he'd turn his body to knock her aside. He'd tense his legs before bracing to shove with the hook and the scales on his hood would ripple just the faintest bit before he'd shift to hiss threats when she didn't move fast enough.

It was a strange realization, strange to think that if she watched closely enough, she could almost sense what he was about to do.

She started to watch him intensely, shutting out little distractions as she fought to guess his next action.

She tripped and was rewarded with a hook smacking her in the head. She dodged a scorpion and was 'corrected' with a brain rattling yank of the chain. She hopped over a pile of dung and managed to dodge the swipe of the hook, eliciting a surprised blink from the Sethrak before an irritated tug sent her reeling.

The snake, though surprised, did not continue to harm her after the little tug, apparently placated by her rapid return to her expected place.

She watched, head throbbing from the smack, but felt her lips curl into a tiny grin.

She couldn't fight him but, with practice, she was certain she could guess his silent demands.

And if she could guess his intent, she could beat him.

A strong tug caused her to barely catch herself before hitting the ground.

Her grin vanished. She ~would~ beat him, hook and shackle or not. The vulpera were quick. The vulpera were clever. The vulpera lived in the sand and stone and ate little snakes.

She refocused on the Sethrak.

Right then, she was the little vulpera... but she was still young. Tass had said so. Someday the snake wouldn't seem quite so big.

And when that day came, she'd eat him.

-~oOo~-

Even watching him closely, she had her work cut out for her in avoiding every misstep along the way. She was used to making quick decisions, one had to when living in the desert. Too many things could kill you if you stopped to think. Vulpera, she was certain, had been made to react.

And she was used to reacting quickly. Even so, the few times she misread his intentions, she found herself sprawled out or dangling from her chain as he callously yanked her along.

Despite his treatment of her, it wasn't long before the blazing light of the outside world was visible as a gash in the cool gloom of the cave.

She had known there were others from the yelps and threats earlier, but as she was led along, she was treated to her first look at them.

They were thin, clearly underfed, and clothed in a spartan assortment of seemingly scavenged rags and scraps. They were tired, weary she guessed, and seemed to move without looking beyond their intended paths. Sethrak stalked among them, prodding when the feeling took them.

She couldn't decide on what to call much of what they were wearing either. Where she had known her tunic, a sash or sheaf, a shirt or wraps, they seemed to have a collection of whatever they had picked up along the way. Most had repurposed tears and loose threads into sleeves and straps to hold things together or even just to keep things on. A few, either lucky or talented in their own right, had apparently folded scraps together and worked threads between them to bind the mishmash together. Across the lot, she counted only three proper items of clothing... all of which were sashes that had been crafted after the original material had been damaged.

They were tired looking and subdued, but every once in a while, when their Sethrak overseers gazes lingered just a moment too long elsewhere, she caught a glint of rebellion in the eyes of a few.

When a tawny vixen twice her size stumbled nearby, colliding briefly with her, she almost yelped when she felt something small and hard pressed into her palm. Within a second, the vixen had been yanked back and swatted back in line, the Sethrak handler hissing an insult about how useless and weak the 'help' was.

She refused to look. She absolutely refused to look as she scrabbled along, but she managed to snatch a few dry stems as they skirted a muddy puddle of an oasis.

Along the way, she twisted them into a scrap of cord and made a bracelet, the sharp little chip of bone fed into her trinket to look like nothing so much as a bauble.

She knew the smell of that vixen. The fish from that morning lingered in her memory.

Tass was clever. She was clever. The Sethrak were not quite so clever as they thought.

And now, she realized as she hopped around a small scorpion, she had a weapon in the little chip of bone wrapped securely around her wrist.


	9. Ruin 08 - Family p2

Their trek was not a terribly long one as far as she was concerned, and though they passed from the salty waste of the basin below the caves they had been held in to the scorching rocks of a gully north of the basin, she found little to cause her trouble.

Little besides the scorpions, ranishu, carrion beetles, krolusk spawn, bonepickers, snakes, or the hissed threats of the Sethrak that kept her chain one link too far to reach when his back was turned. Even still, the walk itself was tolerable, if blisteringly hot.

The first indication that something had changed was the crunch of small stones beneath her paws. Stealing a glance at her captor, she dropped to all fours for a second, mimicking a stumble. Predictably, the Sethrak tugged her shackle, yanking her back into an upright stumble before jabbing her wickedly in the side with his staff.

Biting back a hiss of her own, she hopped along, avoiding the followup swing which seemed to placate the snake long enough to look elsewhere for his entertainment. Scowling at her treatment, she nevertheless trotted along, one hand balled in a loose fist as she felt what she'd managed to swipe when she'd hit the ground.

It was hot, yes, but it wasn't sand, of that she was sure. It was too large to be sand. Too large and too smooth. Testing it with a roll of her hand, the small grains slide between the pads of her fingers. Smooth, rounded, and too large to be sand. Gravel then. Gravel or pea stone. There was also a gritty after touch, probably powdered stone or fine grit from the sandstorms that occassionally beset the land. There was a defined slickness to it as well, something that only seemed to increase the longer she kept her fist clenched. Clay? Maybe seed flour? Perhaps the place was near enough water to grow seed plants and the downy tufts had been ground down under the frequent footfalls of slave and captor?

She wrinkled her nose and sneezed at the growing scent of spoiled meat, the lingering taste on the hot wind doing nothing to settle her meal of fatty smoked fish.

Still, the walk wasn't terrible, all things considered. She managed to steal a glance at her palm to predictable results: pebbles and clay dust. More of the weathered red stone that had given way over time, mixed with the dull tans and oranges of the stone those ruins had been cut from.

Somewhere, she surmised, there must be more remnants of those people, the ones who had built those structures. Somewhere, but not here. Not between her next step and the snake that took any stumble as a reason to crack her with his stick.

Outwardly she scampered along, narrowly dodging his harsher swings and being unlucky enough to be clipped by his slower blows. Inwardly, she counted off how fast his strikes were from various positions. Outwardly, she flinched when she made a misstep. Inwardly, she watched for when he realized she had left his intended path.

Outwardly, she wore a frightened and cowed face.

Inwardly, she worried her little bracelet against a pebble, working the chip of bone to a sharper edge.

And then, all her thoughts collided and left her to stumble as they came around a rocky outcropping and started their ascent up a shallow incline that snaked between rough hewn walls.

Ahead she could just make out the lofty top of a vargo, carefully prepared skins and weathered leather stitched together by deft fingers with reeds of bone and wood threaded to make ribs for the elegant traveling caravans that vulpera were known for.

They had had one, long ago, before the ranishu. Before the sun and sand and cold nights. She remembered the vargo. She remembered the little yellow metal triangles and the tufted tassels that looked for all the world like little vulpera tails dangling in the wind. She remembered the soft blankets that hung like curtains over the open doorway on the side and the little folding step that she had to jump to climb up into the comfortable dark interior. She remembered the haunting notes of... something... that came when the night came and would send her off to chase the little lizards in her dreams.

She remembered her home... before the sands.

And to those memories, the desiccated remains of a vulpera, locked in a rough cage of pitted iron and bone, being gnawed on by ranishu, was branded.

She didn't know what sickened her more... the smell, or the hissed laughter of her keeper as he jabbed her in the back, forcing her to stumble further into the wasted settlement.

-~oOo~-

They threaded their way through the chain of ruined tents and looted caravans. Here and there, littered against the backdrop of destruction, fragments of lives remained. A scrap of colorful fabric, fluttering fitfully in the hot breeze. A beautifully crafted bronze fire pit, laying on its side in a burned out vargo. A rack of what had most likely been cooking tools toppled and crushed under the tread of a slave wagon.

Time and again she would ponder a half-remembered shape or the glint of something partially hidden in the sand only to be yanked from her thoughts by the cruel crack of staff to ribs. Hissing her displeasure earned her only more hissed threats and bruises from when the Sethrak decided that threats weren't enough.

Still, they slowly ascended, passing tents and wagons, small clearings and even a communal fire pit, until it all started to blur together.

Every few yards, another cage was tucked along the side of the path. Every few yards, another desiccated, half consumed, corpse of some life stolen from the sands.

She lost count of the bodies. She had never had reason to count beyond sixteen. Who would need more than sixteen numbers anyway? You couldn't carry more than a few things, and you couldn't store more than a few more. You might be able to see more than sixteen things, but at that point it was a lot and taking the time to count them all would be a waste of time.

In hindsight, she rather would have liked to know how many there were... they didn't deserve to be lost to memory because she couldn't count that high.

She started making up more numbers, numbers beyond sixteen. Seventeen, made sense. Eighteen, Nineteen, Tenteen as well. Eleventeen, Twelveteen... but by Sixteenteen, she realized she'd be getting confused very quickly and just resolved to learn someone else's numbers in the future.

That didn't make seeing more cages with bonepickers pulling out snacks any easier.

By the time the Sethrak had prodded them through the camp, she felt rather numb. The great arch of twisted deadwood hardly seemed important at the moment, despite being more wood than she'd ever seen in one place in her entire life.

But the descent back into the sands from the gravel and clay felt oddly disappointing. Somehow, after seeing all the death, she had expected more to be waiting.

Maybe a great city of snakes? A place of opulence or even just a large puddle of water around which they would be paraded? Something to make the absolute destruction of them seem meaningful?

But after the hours of walking, of stumbling along and avoiding scorpions and the fiery jabs of their captors, all they were treated to was a low lying field of light colored sand, pockmarked with strange metal sculptures.

She was herded to a stop, their slaver hissing out words in an unknown tongue, before lines of strangely dressed Sethrak descended upon them in groups of three.

At first, they simply looked, slinking around and taking note of things only they seemed to see, but as the minutes passed, one of two would hiss out an order and one of her fellow captives would be pulled free of the group. This continued for some minutes until finally the strangely dressed Sethrak seemed satisfied and left.

She wondered idly what would happen to those who were taken, but seeing the mirthless faces of the Sethrak remaining, only managed to choke down her concern.

She wondered, standing in the heat, what was to become of them. What was to become of her.

And then the lightning started.

-~oOo~-

The bolts of lightning arced out of the cloudless skies, scouring blazing trails across her vision. Strike after strike, blast after blast, skin charring heat flashing as each leapt across the statues and coiled into the sands below all while the thunderous roars tore through her ears.

Her ears! Her water loving ears! She found herself curled on the ground, clutching her head as the pounding ache of her ears reduced her to a helpless wreck. It was so terribly loud, and when the searing heat seemed to finally ebb, she found that though the booming roar of thunder had stopped, a screaming wail of a whistle seemed to continue on even while she clamped her ears as hard as she could to her skull.

She became faintly aware of the bitter tang of blood in her mouth, the aching of her teeth crushing with all her desperate strength, and even dampness on her face, but for all that, she just couldn't find it in her to care.

Her ears. Those monsters controlled the skies? How could the snakes control the skies? How? It just wasn't possible!

She received no warning before being yanked into the air by her shackle. Curling up even tighter, she didn't see the staff before it found her ribs, one side after the other. Over and over.

Yelping in pain, she curled tighter, trying to protect herself, to curl in and somehow become too small to be hit, all to no avail.

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen strikes before she was thrown to the sand with all the care of a rotten lump of meat.

Gasping and whimpering, she lay there feeling her body spasm and twitch, until the touch of soft fingers caused her to jolt away in fear.

A feeling, not quite a sound, slowly started to ease its was past the agony of her ribs and the tortured whistle in her ears. Something soft, something vaguely familiar, slowly worming its way into her awareness, until she finally cracked her eyes open to see a tawny vulpera kneeling nearby.

She was bleeding. Her ears were dappled with spots of bright red and twin trails dripped down her cheeks, but she knelt nearby and mouthed soundlessly with a calm, worried, expression.

Tass.... her memory whispered. The older vixen was Tass.

So she uncurled herself and glanced around to make sure the Sethrak weren't behind her, and then launched herself at the vixen.

Tass had seen it coming, had seen the signs, and had braced herself for it. So when the little bleeding ball of fur and tears plowed into her, she clutched the little kit with all her strength and rolled across the ground until they came to a stop.

Tearful, bleeding, bruised and terrified, she clung to Tass with the grip of a child.

Tass held her, rocking slowly and keeping her face buried in her chest so she wouldn't see the bodies of the ones who had tried to run.

The Faithless were monsters, even among the Sethrak.


	10. Ruin 09 - Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is pain before relief. There is suffering before balm. There is hopelessness before resolve. And there is cause before hatred.

The night had been rough. Between the executions, the lightning, and the exhaustion from the forced march, the remaining vulpera were not looking good in her eyes.

After the lightning show, their numbers had been cut down to four. Tass, an ash gray male named "Sebass", herself, and another sandy colored vixen who managed to dodge enough weapons that the slave handler finally just threw a net. That one's name was Wrack, apparently.

Everyone else had either been taken away or left as food for the ranishu and krolusks that roamed the basin.

Even the mean one, the one who had said she should just be left to die, even he hadn't escaped the Sethrak. She knew because even though she'd tried to hide it, Tass kept flinching at the crunching sounds and the caws of the bonepickers as they fought over the bodies.

She had watched, numbly, as the Sethrak had hissed and railed at one another, frequently stabbing fingers towards their little group as they argued.

And though she felt like she should be horrified by everything, that she should be curled up in a ball or racing across the sands as fast as she could, she couldn't help but realize that if the Sethrak were upset about something, something must have gone wrong.

So, while Tass tried not to show her pain, Wrack snarled and hissed through the net that held her, and Sebaas kept interposing himself between them all and whichever Sethrak drew close, she sat down and watched as the Sethrak argued.

The Sethrak were livid. The slave handlers were snapping and hissing at the drivers. The drivers were hissing and nipping at the hooded ones. The hooded ones without slaves were shrieking their displeasure and the ones with slaves were hissing threats at any that approached them. The hooded ones near the metal sculpture things were especially animated, pulling long curved blades and keeping their backs to their statues.

And while all of it was certainly very interesting, she just couldn't figure out what to do.

Every time she saw an opening, every time she spotted one of the handlers distracted, she'd glance towards the basin and see the bonepickers. Every time the Sethrak would start fighting, drawing the others attention, she'd glance at the rocks and spot the ranishu burrowing through someone or another. Even the realization that her shackle had come free in the confusion didn't seem to register as anything more than a curiousity... what with only four of them left.

Where would she go?

It wasn't like she had anything. She had lost her tools, her food, her home. All of her possessions. Gone. Lost to the sands or the fires as surely as the vargo or the victims in the cages. She couldn't even trust that her senses were working right... her ears were still ringing and the occassional roar of thunder certainly didn't help.

So when the Sethrak abruptly stopped fighting, she hardly noticed until a clawed hand batted Sebaas aside and reached for her, only to have an irate Tass latch onto it with a set of vicious jaws.

The Sethrak seemed shocked for all of a second before effortlessly punching the vixen free and kicking her to the side. A quick lunge and she found herself suspended by the scruff of her neck, staring into the poison green glare of a hooded, silt colored Sethrak with a white underbelly.

The snake stared at her, his tongue flicking out an inch from her nose as she stared back, a curious, if cold, look upon its face. Slitted eyes studied her, flitting around briefly as she hung in his grip, before tossing her back and snatching the net that still held the other vixen, Wrack.

His eyes slid briefly towards Sebaas as the dog lunged, snarling, before batting him aside to resume his study of the vixen in the net.

She noted that he wore a leather skirt of some sort though, unlike the other Sethrak, his was adorned with a patch of thick gold coins stitched over his right hip. On his back, the hilt of a wickedly curved blade of sea greeen stone rested. She noted idly that between the scales on his underbelly, a pale blue glow pulsed in regular intervals.

Apparently dissatisfied with whatever he saw, he roughly tossed Wrack back to the ground before stalking off, pushing through a cluster of arguing Sethrak and swinging himself up onto the back of a krolusk. The chittering shuffle of the beast faded as he left.

Within minutes, the others seemed to resolve their differences. The handlers and drivers bitterly collected any bits not eaten by the ranishu and tossed them further into the basin where they were immediately set upon. The hooded snakes watched from a distance with anger in their eyes. Even the ones by the statues glared, though they took no action other than glaring at the other Sethrak as they 'cleaned up' the mess.

Within minutes, a handler had returned with the pitted hook and collected them. When a barking shout came from the driver, they were all herded towards a narrow gap to the north east.

The handler noticed her missing shackle, and within seconds, she found herself on the ground, pinned with the hook end of his staff pressing into her neck.

She saw the momentary fluttering of the scales under his hood and closed her eyes just as the hiss erupted from his throat. Liquid, vile and sour, sprayed over her face as he held her prone.

Her claws scraped upon the hook, scrambling desperately at the metal as she struggled to breathe. She bared her teeth, spit, and hissed her own wordless threats, but was simply pressed harder into the sands. She could hear Tass pleading nearby, could hear Sebaas hurling his impotent threats, but her world had shrunk to the pressure on her neck and the burning in her eyes where the venom had seeped in.

By the time twenty seconds had passed, she was screaming between gasps from the agony of her eyes alone.

It wasn't until she felt a tight pinch at her waist followed by a dousing of cold fluid over her head that the pain began to fade.

She was soaking, she realized. Soaking and covered in some kind of stinking goop. She struggled for a moment before the hook came free and she scrambled blindly until she felt herself slam into something with her back. Dropping down, she hissed and spat, puffing her fur and tail up as big as she could while swiping at her eyes.

A slightly sour smell, like spoiled food, permeated everything and the wetness promised more damp sand in her future. Of course, she hardly cared as she finally cleared her eyes, and looked out through the blur of injury.

She was given little time to recover as within moments, she felt a sharp tug that sent her sprawling, and with a strange moment of clarity, realized that the Sethrak had locked her shackle around her waist instead of her neck.

Being tugged to her feet, she grasped at the metal desperately, trying to pry it free as she tried to draw a deeper breath. Time and again, she squirmed, her panic quickly rising, until the world seemed to sway unsteadily.

She could hear the hissed commands, could feel the crack of a lash, but with the unyielding strap of metal clamped firmly around her waist, the panic kept their meaning from making sense. She needed to get free. She needed to move.

And so, with ever quickening breaths, the edges of her vision faded and the world constricted itself to an ever shrinking circle until she was torn from her panic by the clawed back hand of the handler.

"SSSSHUT UP!" he bellowed, drawing back to strike her three more times before grabbing her about the neck and throwing her to the ground.

The air knocked from her lungs, she struggled to draw breath, made doubly hard by the overtight shackle that collared her waist. Gasping, tearing at the lump of metal, she barely noticed his approach before being held up again by her neck. Her claws feebly scraping across his scales, he drew his face close until their noses nearly touched.

"You will be sssssilent! You will be obedient! Or you will be dead." He hissed as he shook her briefly. He held her, cold green eyes promising horrible things, until she stilled. "You are almosst more trouble that you are worth. But with all of those dead, you are ssssstill worth ssssomething." He opened his mouth, the cavernous tunnel lined with dagger-like fangs, before licking her nose and shivering. A moment later, his maw snapped shut, close enough to send a twinge of pain up her whiskers. "A ssssnack, if nothing elssse."

He glowered before dropping her to the ground and crouching imperiously over her.

"Now... go and dig a hole. Be usssseful. Be dead. It matterssss little to me."

He snarled as he stepped away, the chain of her shackle bolted firmly around the heavy door of a cage wrought from bone and iron.

She would dig a hole... she would dig a hole because he had told her to.  
She would watch that hole be filled with sand as Tass, Sebass, and Wrack dumped the sand from their holes into it. Because they were told to.

And when night finally came, when the sun fell below the rocks, they were whipped because there were only three holes and a pile of sand.

*****

Waking up to searing agony that seemed to lance through her head, she howled in confusion and suffering as she tried, unsuccessfully, to bolt. The initial agony was quickly multiplied tenfold as searing pain joined the scent of burning meat and hair. She screeched, twisting and flailing desperately, but finding herself held in the mercilessly solid grip of her slaver.

The experience repeated two more times... once more on the same ear, and again on the opposite.

Tears and blood mingled on her face as the red hot poker was lowered to her muzzle. Dreading the implications, she clenched her jaw with every bit of will she had, eyes fixed upon the instrument of her suffering.

A gravelly hiss preceded the voice of the Sethrak which held the poker. "Quite a bit of life in you.... it will be a pleassssure to break it."

Staring at the poker as it drew near her face, she found herself straining to push away. Pinned as she was, the poker came all the way to her nose, her whiskers flaring up and curling in a horrid little cloud of soot, before the iron was drawn away to be replaced with the frowning glare of her tormentor.

"And don't you forget it, bitch. I remember you. You scarred my neck and faccccccce." He leaned in, the scent of rot upon his breath. "And I won't forget that ssstunt you pulled with the shackle."

He glared a moment longer before pulling away and lightly tapping another metal tool before her eyes.

It took her a moment to realize that it was an oversized leather punch, slicked with blood.

He watched her face as, with a firm tap, three bloody disks fell out in front of her face, covered in fine fur, the color of sand.

His hissing laughter rang through the canyon as she screamed at the chunks of her ears that rolled off the plank and fell to the ranishu below.

"And don't you forget me, either," he snarled.


	11. Ruin 10 - Chain Link

Her ears were swollen and the winds on the dunes made them burn like sandstinger wasp venom. Tass had put some lasher balm on the wounds but, even with the numbing, every little breeze set them aflame again.

Of course, she wasn't going to complain about it. The others had been mutilated just as much as she, and sported their own set of three holes punched and burned through their ears. The Sethrak had seemed almost cheerful as he explained how it marked them as his property until they were purchased by another who would, likely, mark them further.

It had seemed almost a point of pride as he got them each to howl or scream, only Sebaas having the bitter will to keep his pain to himself.

It hadn't helped.

For the crime of not screaming, he had been tied to a skin rack and had glowing fire pokers drug down his back. The burns were bad enough that he'd been left to wake on his own as fluids had oozed from the sores.

Tass had done what she could once he was kicked into the little crack they'd been told was their shelter, patching him up until Wrack had pushed her aside and muttered darkly. The pale yellow light had shocked everyone as it pulsed from her palms and into Sebaas, and though he did not wake, the burns scabbed over and had stopped seeping.

All of that had been the day before, and since then they had been given only a single desert pear between them to eat.

Tass had split it with a chip of bone she'd found, carving it into rough quarters and wrapping the one for Sebaas in some dried lasher fronds.

Wrack had eaten hers almost instantly, the juice seeming to not even touch her lips before it too was swallowed. She had taken Wrack's approach as well, knowing that saving the food was ideal, but keeping the moisture was more valuable.

Tass... Tass had eaten half of hers and rolled the other half in more lasher fronds. Lots of lasher fronds, until it was a large, spiny, ball almost as thick as her chest. When Tass had seen her watching, she'd explained that the lasher fronds were not good to eat, and they'd steal the water, but if there were enough of them, you could squeeze the water back out and it wouldn't be lost.

She had been impressed. She'd always just kept the eyes of krolusks or saved the waxy fruits of desert plants by burying them. That Tass knew how to get water BACK from a lasher was almost like magic.

Almost like watching Wrack heal Sebaas.

Which was another thing. Wrack knew something about magic.

She'd known it existed, her mother had told her stories about how the sands hadn't always been sand, how they had once been giant green things that stole the heat from the sky and made night during the day, but she'd never had any way to understand what that meant. Her mother had eventually just smiled and told her it was magic that did it.

And Wrack knew some magic.

All of that meant little though, outside of the fact that when Sebaas had woken up, Wrack had gone back over and done it again, making him groan and hiss, but smile at the end.

Those two had curled up together in the corner and Wrack had picked through the scabs to free up what fur hadn't been burned to ash on his back.

But come the morning, they'd been drug from their shelter and a pair of Sethrak each assigned to them.

Tass had gone quietly, the chain from her shackle drawn between the two. Sebaas had resisted, predictably, and been whipped for his efforts. Wrack had followed after Sebaas, and though she dodged the initial strikes, the pair of snakes has simply pulled away from one another, drawing her chain tight and lifting her into the air where a third had whipped her for the insult of not being in pain.

She had scuttled out and stayed between her handlers. And though she'd hissed and growled, she watched them and followed their movements.

It had frustrated them, but she hadn't done anything to deserve a whipping, so they had only hissed their threats.

It was cruel. It was cruel and hot and uncomfortable being in the sun, being drug around and forced to race along the Sethrak as they mounted their krolusks, but it was better than having to do the same thing after being whipped.

Sebaas certainly looked like he was half dead when they finally finished their run across the dunes.

But all of that had been in the morning, and when they had arrived near a great outcropping of raw stone, she had been fascinated by the glittering shine of strange rocks poking up from the sands.

The Sethrak had marched them over towards the strange rocks, making sure to bring them each to a different rock.

But the rocks... the rocks were like pieces of the sky and sun melted together.

They were blue and yellow and gold and tingled when she touched them, though she got a whip to the back for doing so.

There were only so many things that she knew of that felt differently when you touched them... most of them poisonous. There was the sap that came from some of the gulch vines. Thick and goopy, it didn't feel like anything at all when you touched it. Then again, that was why it was used for medicine. Once you touched it, you couldn't feel whatever it had touched for a few hours: great for getting home if you got a barb stuck in you, bad for everything else since you might end up with even more injuries. Ranishu stomachs were kind of like that too, but the exact opposite. They were so dangerous that you needed to remove them with sticks... sticks of wood since rock would fizzle and pop if they got any juice on them. and ranishu had so many stomachs. If they weren't good to trade, she doubted that there would have ever been a reason to open a ranishu in the first place. Then there was salt. Salt was weird. It was a rock, but it was a rock you could eat. It grew in puddles near the ocean, according to what mother said, but it wasn't a plant. How could something grow from water if it wasn't a plant? But it was a rock for just about every other purpose. Unless, of course, it touched an injury which somehow made it burn until there was no more feeling than a lingering ache.

But this was different.

She dodged a few more warning strikes with the hook before the Sethrak handler on her one side threw a stick with a chunk of metal on the end at her. She easily dodged it, but why had they thrown something at her so slowly?

They didn't continue their attack, though there was quite a bit of hissing and generally intimidating posturing going on.

It was all very confusing, which only served to highlight the strange sound that started somewhere behind her.

Springing back, and getting caught in the chains of her shackle, she flopped to the ground and hopped back to all fours just in time for the strange sound to happen again. She, of course, hopped up in shock, and continued to do so for a number of seconds as the sound startled her again and again.

This was, apparently, hilarious to the Sethrak because, though they had been angry, they ended up in a rolling hiss of laughter until the novelty of the situation wore thin.

Fur on end, twitching in time with the sound, she had her attention drawn to the side when one of the handlers tugged on her chain and forced her to look further down the dune where Wrack was swinging a similar metal ended stick at one of the shiny rocks, each hit punctuated with the strange hollow ringing sound that so set her fur on edge.

When she didn't immediately respond, the Sethrak tugged again and pointed to another rock where Tass was hitting her own stick as well.

Before he could direct her again, she turned, following her burning ears to the sound of an erratic, though much more forceful sound where she saw Sebaas beating his rock while under the watchful eyes of his two handlers and a roaming third with a metal stick.

She wasn't an idiot.

The laughter had stopped and she could almost smell their impatience with her starting to turn sour. Plopping herself down to quickly shake the sand free of her coat, she snatched up the metal ended stick and hopped over to her own rock.

The stick was almost larger than she was, and the metal end made it heavy and hard to maneuver, not a weapon she would ever come up with herself. It was too slow and too hard to move to hit anything alive. But, then again, rocks didn't run away and they couldn't sting you if you weren't paying attention.

So she lifted the metal ended stick, aimed, and swung.

Which resulted in her toppling over as the stick tugged itself from her paws.

More hissing laughter. More little warning threats. More little teeth grinding in her mouth. More scampering around to dodge the impatient prods of pitted metal hooks.

More little bits of anger.

But by the second swing, she hit it and heard her own little hollow echoing sound that set her fur on end.

It was a strange sound, a hollow sound that didn't seem to quite come from the rock itself, and a sound that left her feeling both bitter and curious.

Maybe if she hadn't been doing it at the end of a chain or the sting of a whip, she might have found the curious sound enticing.

As it was, it only served to set a lonely tone that seemed to sink deep into her bones.

And each hit only made that feeling linger.

A few minutes in and she'd started to get into a rhythm. Swing, stagger, hop back to the rock, balance swing stagger and adjust her grip. Swing, stagger, hop back to the rock, balance swing stagger and adjust her grip again.

It was slow. Her hits only came for about every three or four of everyone else's, but her handlers didn't seem to mind. It was almost like they were in no hurry, no burden to accomplish anything. If she broke the rock, then fine. But if she didn't, they seemed content that she was wearing herself out in the misery of the hot sun while they watched.

It was infuriating.

She found her swings becoming slightly more forceful, slightly less accurate. One glanced off the side, impacting the sand and sending her off her rhythm. She hissed at the stick, throwing the handle to the ground and not even noticing as she dodged a prod from her handler. Before she knew what was happening, she was biting the stick to punish it for betraying her and picking it back up with a snarl of warning.

Then it was back to hitting the rock, her stick behaving itself again.

Which was fine, until the rock decided to shatter, giving out a ringing tone and shooting off little chips of razor sharp rock that popped and sizzled in the air.

She found herself on her back, her chest aching from where the shackle had wrenched her to an abrupt halt and her body aching from the little shockwave the rock had given off when it had broken.

Pushing herself up, she found her chains limp and found the bizarre sight of her captors collecting the shards from the sand.

No wonder they were having her and Tass and Wrack and Sebaas hitting the rocks instead of doing it themselves. The strange rocks blew up.

Snorting in aggravation, she started to push herself up until a sharp pain in her leg brought her up short.

Sticking out of her flesh, a sliver of the blue and gold rock glistened. Looking around, the Sethrak seemed distracted with their collection and the others were too far away to whisper without the handlers hearing.

It was sharp. VERY sharp. So sharp she hadn't even felt it until she tried to move.

Setting her teeth, she slid her fingers down and gripped the smooth surface tightly before pulling it free. Blood pooled up from the wound, but, after a moment a curious thing happened.

The edge of the sliver, the sharp end that had been stuck in her, glimmered brightly despite the thin coating of blood that even then continued to slip free of its surface, and a single drop of liquid gold fell back onto her leg.

And when it touched, she felt a warmth seep deep into her flesh as the blood seemed to soak back in.

She stared for a moment, looking at the unbroken skin of her leg, until a rough yank on her chain sent her tumbling.

Pushing herself up, she saw one of her handlers plucking the sliver from the ground where it had slipped from her fingers before dropping it into a leather bag on his hip.

He hadn't seen, or if he had, he hadn't realized what she had discovered.

Brusquely, she got back to her feet and picked up her metal ended stick.

Giving them no reason to warn her further, she resumed hitting shiny rocks, listening for the sound that would warn of the impending break.

And watching, very carefully, to see if they missed any splinters in the sand.


	12. Ruin 11 - Beneath

The sun set well before night actually came, and though she could see just fine, her Sethrak handlers seemed unwilling to continue their collection of the exploding rocks. Of course, that meant that it had been time to go back to their shelter, or so she had thought.

Unexpectedly, the hooded one with the krolusk apparently had other plans.

As the others were herded off to the east, her handler hissed a stiff warning as she turned to follow. Half coiling himself between her and the others, she saw Tass reach back only to be yanked backward by her own set of handlers. Sebaas snarled out his displeasure and launched himself to her defense, only to come up short as the chains on his neck arrested his flight. The pair were drug off, one pawing at her collar, the other a bristling flurry of claws and teeth.

Wrack watched with a bitter frown, following along and shooting her handlers poorly hidden glares of her own.

Ultimately though, the others faded from view and she was left alone with her pair of handlers.

As the sky continued to darken, the sandy colored one kept a weather eye towards the north, constantly shifting his stance on the cooling sand.

She watched as he adjusted himself, confused at the behavior until he turned and dropped his chain before nodding once and moving off.

The remaining handler hissed out sibilantly before gathering the loose chain and tugging her firmly to the south.

He wasn't the strongest of the handlers, she knew, though none of them were truly weak either. He simply wasn't a warrior in his own right. Perhaps he enjoyed the time in the sun. Perhaps he was only doing as he was told. Where others scales rippled with sinuous muscle or corded strength firmed taunt hoods into rigid forms from their necks, his strength seemed more centered in his arms. A crafter or magic user then. She snorted softly at the thought. What did it matter if he was weak for a Sethrak? Their weakest were still far stronger than she could hope to overcome. Moreso after laboring for hours in the sun with little water and no food to speak of.

Still, it was something she recognized, something she would remember. Even a scrap of food was still food, and one didn't need a full meal if they could steal enough morsels.

Even so, when he had dismissed the other handler and started working his way south, it had surprised her. The Sethrak were not stupid, and even the simplest of them would know that a slave was more valuable than empty chains.

Continuing along, she noted that though he carried a long hooked stick, the end was not the same as those that the other handlers had carried. Where theirs were dark, pitted, hooks with a waxy sheen, his bore a stylized scoop made of a yellowish metal, fashioned to resemble a snake's head with a flared hood. Where they would use their hooks as tools or even prods, he kept his carefully lifted, as if striking the ground was something he wished to avoid.

She narrowed her eyes at this, trying to think back to if she'd ever seen him actually let it touch anything else.

Meanwhile, the sky bled into a washed out red as night crept ever nearer.

She remembered him having another stick. The one he had been using while they were collecting the exploding rocks. She remembered well the firm shoves and implied threats when he swung it, but thinking back, the stick he was currently using was decidedly different from that one.

Perhaps he had traded it off when he'd decided to go south? Taking this one while giving the dark pitted thing to the other handler? Maybe he'd had it all along and had simply not used it? She couldn't remember exactly when she'd noticed the change, but she knew he had not had it out when the other Sethrak were around.

Maybe he wasn't supposed to have it in the first place?

Her musings were brought to an end as she set paw upon warm stone. Looking around, she noticed the ridge of rock to the west had continued to rise, now collaring off in some sort of broken canyon. To the east, the dunes rippled in the heat, making the distant forms of ruins and the massive silhouette of a tiered pyramid waver. South, a broken range of high rocks rimming dark smears with the occasional flash of lightning, distance and winds reducing the thunder to a low rumble.

Still, the flashes brought painful throbbing to her ears, a physical reminder of the past few days.

Thankfully, though she was curious about the features further south, her handler instead glanced around and gave a light tug to the east, out into lee of the red canyon. Scuttling along at the end of her 'leash', she kept glancing around, noting the strange combination of sand and almost silky dust that would puff up as they stepped. It was strange, stranger still that her handler was leading her into the coming night alone, but stranger even than that when she missed a step and he didn't try to strike or threaten her.

She blinked in confusion before recognizing the Sethrak's tongue flicking the air much more regularly.

Something was keeping him focused.

Suddenly, the shackle clamped around her waist felt much more dangerous, the weight of the chain, heavier.

If he was less focused on her, that meant something important was nearby, but it also meant that whatever it was was probably something that required his attention.

Pricking her ears, flinching at the brief stab of pain, she strained to pick something out of the myriad sounds of the desert.

Wind. The distant clacking of deadwood on rock... probably a bush or the skeletal remains of some long withered tree. The everpresent skittering of the ranishu. The soft, distant, susurrations of the krolusk herds. The soft half-hissed breathing of her handler and..... something else.

Scrunching up her nose in concentration, she turned her head, trying to keep her ears still, as she sought it out. Sound, on the dunes, could be tricky. Out in the open, it was obvious, but down in the gullies, near cliffs, anywhere there were hollows or 'fuzzy' features, sound liked to play tricks.

Which it was doing at the moment.

She looked and listened. There just wasn't anything immediately visible that matched though... so, over a dune, under a rock, around something that hid it then. There just wasn't a way that the rhythmic.... sound could be blatant.

Glancing to her handler, he seemed to be using his hood to focus as well, his pupils wide as his tongue flicked.

His hood? She blinked. Why hadn't she ever thought of that before? The snakes didn't have ears, so the hooded ones used their hoods to act like them. It explained why their sense of smell was so good but why their sight seemed primarily for only close things.

She considered the possibility of simply sneaking away some time, simply.... getting out of range and staying down wind... would that actually....

But her thoughts were interrupted as the snake gave a tug to her chain, drawing her up and over a small rise, only to cause her to stop at what she saw.

There, not a minutes travel down the hill, was a massive skeletal beast, half submerged in the sand.... a gaping hole in its maw that led into the echoing void of the darkness below.

She blinked a few times, settling to her hands and feet as the Sethrak surveyed the scene.

To the west, the rock walls of the mountains had darkened to a deep gray purple. To the north, the still shimmering sands of the dunes. Southward lay dunes and what she could now see as some kind of great, low laying collection of stone before the blue-black rise of a rocky collar of stone. East lay the great ruins of a forgotten people, towering monolithic above the sands that continued to climb its sides in the impossible task of consuming the great pyramid. And then, south east, a gap ran through it all, mottled with rocky bluffs and scattered remnants of crumbling stone structures, where the distant horizon met a pitch black smear.

And scattered here and there throughout the entire southern reach, were tiny, distant fires.

She swallowed.

Fire meant people... Vulpera, Sethrak or stranger still, but people. Tucked into the rocks, perched upon crumbling buildings, drifting in slowly moving lines in one place... fire.

There were others. There were other places she could go, places which might not gift her with nights of agony and days of blistering starvation.

Or they might be even worse.

She shivered at the thought, but the fires told her there were places that the Sethrak might not call their domain.

She was jolted from her thoughts as a tug on her chain caused her to lurch forward, catching herself with her palms as her handler squinted in the dim light of the early evening.

And though he did not hiss or bellow, the glare he gave her conveyed all the same, his demand for her silence.

A breath found them descending the dune, her handler pointedly ignoring the lights as he directed her towards the enormous corpse, long since blasted dry and bare by the desert winds. And from within, the thrumming pulse she had felt weakly before.

A soft his and they were stepping inside, the dark almost cold upon her skin, but a faint glimmer of light seemed to beckon from within.

Steps turned into a walk, and the walk into a climb down bony ridges. Before long, she felt that she had far exceeded the belly of the beast, and the muffled crunch of brittle stone chips only served to support her thought.

Down they went, following a path only the handler seemed to know, until coming around a bend, the glimmer opened into a pillar of light, glistening in the darkness.

A shard of the sun, melted with the sky, blazing in the darkness swallowed by a best long forgotten.

"This," hissed her handler, "was worth the risk." He smiled wickedly as he surveyed the cavern shining with the exploding rocks.


	13. Ruin 12 - Slipping Under

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is blood here, and a rather cruel depiction of slavery/violence.

Three days. Three days she was marched out to the giant corpse of a hole to chip out exploding rocks for her 'special' handler before he became impatient enough to bring more slaves.

Three days of toiling in the sun with the others before toiling in the dark alone.

Three days with no sleep, little water and less food.

But on the third day his hissed command to march out to the exploding rocks was instead a march out across a new trail cut through the dunes.

The other Sethrak looked uncertain, perhaps even upset, but when he had lifted his strange hook, the one he wouldn't let touch the ground, they had reluctantly agreed.

The march took longer, and while the others seemed confused, she knew where they were going. How could she not? Whenever she wasn't marching, she was either hitting exploding rocks in the sand with her little group of slaves or hitting exploding rocks in the dark all alone.

But they didn't know that. They couldn't know that. He'd made sure to keep its location secret, even from the other Sethrak. Maybe it was important for some reason, or maybe he was just greedy for the exploding rocks, but he'd made it very clear that she wasn't to say anything to anyone.

So, even though she hadn't spoken much before, even Sebaas had noticed she had spoken less since her 'private time' with her handler.

Tass was not happy about that. When she'd come back the first night, Tass had swarmed over her, picking through her fur and checking her ear holes for fresh blood. She'd been tired then, but they'd had to march right back out so even Tass' protective nature had to be put on hold. Wrack had bristled a bit, using her magic when their handlers weren't watching, and she'd found a few of the smaller cuts she'd picked up in the dark had sealed properly before they'd arrived back out in the sands.

Watching them be marched back off to their 'camp' while her handler took her again to the hole had been horrible, the next day, worse.

But, after three days of slaving in the dark, he'd finally decided that one, small, slave wasn't enough to take what he wanted.

They'd come across it, much to the surprise of all the handlers but her own, and had been directed to enter. Down, into the dark, they'd gone, clustered together as she followed in an exhausted daze. Down through the gullet of the beast, past the dark turns and darker cracks, until finally, a dim glow brought them to the cavern beneath.

They'd stared for a few moments until the Sethrak had drawn their whips and thrown down their metal capped sticks. She'd not picked hers up fast enough, and the resulting lash brought stinging welts to her back. Her handler didn't stop the other Sethrak after the first strike, and she was too tired to resist.

By the third lash, she was curled up in a ball.

By the fifth, Sebaas had broken free of his handler and swung his chain around the Sethrak with the whip's neck.

He didn't get further than that before being yanked free and beaten until he stopped moving.

No one else tried to do anything as the Sethrak with the whip knelt down and hissed in his face before extending his fangs and forcing Sebaas to watch as he slowly sank them into his arm.

Even though he tried to keep silent, it only took a few seconds before his resolve broke and he started screaming.

The Sethrak stayed that way, fangs in Sebaas' arm, keeping him still while glaring unflinchingly, for a full minute before pulling free and backhanding him into the wall.

And her handler watched her the entire time, the hint of a smile at the corners of his scaly lips.

No one had stopped them when they'd drawn their whips again. No one had stopped them when she'd been lashed until she bled. No one had stopped them when they'd hung Sebaas by his tail from a chunk of rock. No one had stopped them.

And so, when the pain had dulled to the point where she could move, she crawled over to her stick and began to tap on the nearest exploding rock. And they never suspected that she'd seen Sebaas watching her, hanging from his tail, pretending to be unconscious.

She'd tapped, weakly but determinedly, until she heard the strange sound that warned the rock was about to break, and then dropped her stick.

Her handler had seen the stick fall, but before he had done anything, one of the others had come over and taken her stick from the ground. He looked at the stick, glared at her, and struck her twice while threatening worse.

But she'd been around them long enough to know what came next, and inside she was laughing.

First came the threats, then the beatings, then came the posturing that showed that they were superior... that the vulpera were slaves because they deserved to be.

She must have smiled because her handler glanced at the one with her stick and opened his mouth to speak.

But pride is a funny thing, she thought, because the handler with her stick seemed so much faster in his anger... so much faster that her handler hadn't even gotten out a single word before the one with her stick was demonstrating how simple, how absolutely menial her job was... by demonstrating his strength with her stick, and a full swing against the exploding rock.

And the world blossomed into light and pain as the Sethrak was torn to ribbons.

Oh, it hurt. Every part of her hurt. Her ears were ringing and she tasted blood and she couldn't move but to breathe and cackle in pain, but cackle she did because it certainly wasn't a laugh that escaped her bloodied mouth.

"BITCH!"

And then her whole body slammed into the rough wall of the cavern, splinters of stone, slicing what had already been whipped raw. But the ground was cool and the dim glow of gold and blue let her see the mangled corpse of the Sethrak who had been holding her stick.

The others were swarming over him, hissing and snapping at one another as their voices rose.

She couldn't understand what they were saying, and she really didn't care. The ground was cool and the pain that lanced through her made their shouting seem unimportant.

But the shadow that fell over her, the eyes of her handler as he slunk down to stare at her, that felt cold.

When she didn't respond, he repeated himself, bitterly and with loosely controlled anger.

Twice more, he repeated himself, before her addled thoughts strung the sounds together into the sibilant hiss of his words, and even then, it took one more repetition before she was able to understand.

"You will pay for that, bitch. Are you still alive?"

She'd moved her mouth. She didn't have the words to respond, but apparently seeing her move had been enough because he'd cupped her face in his hands and pressed the tips of his claws down, into the sides of her muzzle, and begun to cut twin gouges.

She'd whimpered, not having the strength for more with her entire body aching and every muscle weary from days of labor.

And he'd smiled wickedly as he completed his work. "You are mine now, bitch. You won't be sold. You won't be traded. You won't eat or drink save for what I give you." He hissed viciously as he dropped her head to the stone. "He was an idiot, but I saw how you dropped your pick." He snarled, something she didn't know a snake could do. "I will make you suffer, bitch."

And to make his point, he staked her chain to the same rock Sebaas was hanging from, dangling her by her waist as she bled, until finally darkness claimed her.

Bitch couldn't remember when last she had slept so soundly.


	14. Ruin 13 - Erosion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's slow, but is the official start of our little Vulpera's escape. She's already killed one Sethrak, but it cost both her and Sebaas dearly.

She was cold when she awoke. Cold and hungry and in pain and thirsty. But she was awake, and if she could feel all those things, she was alive.

She chuckled to herself, or at least that's what she thought as she coughed and gagged with a dry throat that hadn't had a proper drink in almost four days. It was funny, in its own way... she knew she should be worried for what would come next. She should be terrified of her handler's anger. She should be curled in a ball and shaking and trying to be as small as possible so that he might overlook her. She should be a lot of things but, dangling there, hanging from the shackle that was still pinned tightly around her waist, hoisted halfway to the ceiling in a cave under the blistering desert sun with Sebaas hanging next to her asleep in the dark... she just couldn't muster up the energy to care.

So she dangled.

It seemed the appropriate thing to do.

The sound of the metal capped sticks hitting the exploding rocks was almost soothing to her throbbing head. Their rhythmic notes punctuated with the occasional twang that promised an upcoming burst. It was almost comical that the Sethrak didn't seem to notice, or if they did, they just didn't care.

But that was still funny in its own way.

She hung, not having the energy for much more than breathing and listening. Even blinking seemed an effort better wasted on breathing. Blinking was good, but breathing was better. She'd traded breathing for blinking for all of a few breaths... the results had been less satisfactory, so she'd gone back to her previous plan. Breathing was good.

And, after a few hours, she'd managed to become proficient at breathing.

It was an accomplishment. Her ribs hurt from the explosion and the beating and the endless work, but dangling didn't need her to keep working or be beaten. She'd already been beaten, so it made sense that she could just work on breathing for the time being.

Sebaas was working on breathing too. If she'd had the energy, she would have patted him for a job well done. He hadn't even stopped breathing to see if blinking was better.

Something about that though seemed off, and it took her the better part of another hour before it had managed to float to the surface of her muddled mind.

Breathing shouldn't be that hard.

Blinking shouldn't even be a concern.

Somewhere along the way, she came to the conclusion that something was wrong and that she should know what it was and that she should be worried.

But all of that just seemed like something she had already worried about, so, for the moment, she focused on breathing and listening and thinking and not worrying about things to be worried about and reminding herself that if Sebaas was practicing his breathing that she should probably do that too because he was bigger and stronger and upsidedowner than her and Tass wasn't hanging or dangling or practicing breathinging.

Something about that seemed wrong too, but it wasn't more important that breathing, so she worked on what she could work on.

And somewhere along the way, she stopped thinking about thinking and started just breathing without thinking about it.

When next she woke, it was to the strange sensation of moisture on her lips. Something cool and wet was being pressed to her lips and her fingers hurt.

It took her entirely too long to realize that her fingers hurt because she had instinctively grabbed whatever the damp thing was and had started clamping her fingers closed in a death grip to get to the promise of water.

She couldn't see at first, eyes glued shut and fur feeling tight from dried blood, but her aching ears picked up the muffled sounds of something that seemed familiar. Suddenly, a sensation of cool liquid flooded her mouth and she set her teeth firmly in the bitter flesh of whatever it was she was clutching so tightly. Seconds bled to minutes and she gnawed fitfully until the fluids finally stopped.

Exhausted, but feeling less like a shriveled weed, she released her fingers, having to tug weakly to free her claws, and began the arduous task of breaking the gunk from her eyes.

The first stab of light was agony. The second a familiar pain. By the third, the ache had dulled and she had begun to make sense of the murky blurs in what she realized was the dim light of their little crack.

Tass was there, working with a few half shriveled lasher fronds, dutifully splitting the brittle edges and pulling the sharp barbs free. She watched for some time, staring as Tass would carefully grip the pulpy centers and nip around the needle sharp barbs.

It was a strange thing to do, stranger still that she would do so and then pile the nipped fronds in one place only to pull another over and repeat the process.

Time and again, Tass completed this seemingly pointless task until all the fronds had been nipped around their barbs.

The fronds looked pitiful, but they had water inside. She remembered the lashers stored water for the dry season... which was every season in the desert.

But when Tass knocked over the pile and pulled the bottom frond back up to her face, she must have noticed her eyes were open because she immediately dropped it and came to check on her.

First there was the sniffing, then the fine tips of her claws picking through her fur. Then the sting as she began to break up scabs and gently work fine sand free of her coat. The careful stretching of her limbs came next, and she whimpered a few times as Tass's ministrations stretched scabs and half damp sores. Finally, satisfied, Tass curled her back up and picked up the frond she had been working on. Looking between it and her a few times, Tass slunk over and bit the large spike at the end of the frond and held the thick leaf as she pulled.

What happened next stunned her.

As Tass pulled, there was a soft tearing sound before the spike pulled free, trailing a few thin, white, threads from the leaf itself. Fully the length of the entire frond, Tass drew them clear before she placed the spike-less frond to her lips as cool fluid began to dribble out.

Thirst she had forgotten, remembered the cool fluids and she found herself clutching the draining frond as she drank. It was no bottle or cup, it was no clear water or fresh stream, but to her bone dry lips and throat, it was like finding an oasis.

She continued drinking, sucking and gnawing on the thinning frond as she watched Tass carefully pulling the threads between her teeth, spitting the whitish goo that clung to them off into the dark. Time and again, Tass did this, the threads slowly losing their white as they were cleaned, until they more resembled thin brown hair.

Finally satisfied, Tass pulled the spike, no thicker than a needle, from her teeth and hung it along with others on a withered root twisting from the wall.

She noticed, with some amusement, that a number of such needles were hanging, apparently trophies of Tass' 'hunt' for the lashers.

In her current state, she couldn't even blame Tass for taking pride in her 'kills'.

And then, Tass had turned back to her and pulled the drained frond away.

"You lost a lot of blood back there, but Wrack kept putting you back together whenever they weren't watching too closely." She shifted to pull another frond over before she tugged another spike free, offering the fluid filled leaf to her. "Sebaas too. Nearly died when they kept going, but Wrack kept him breathing until some new slaves showed up and we carried you both back here."

Tass began cleaning the threads from her newest spike before pulling the dry frond from her.

She watched as Tass worked the threads clean, spitting the white goo into the dark and hanging the newest needle with the others. "We caught a lizard about an hour ago and kept if for you if you feel up to it."

She didn't know if there was a right way to answer. Food had become so scarce with the Sethrak working them that they'd had to make ends meet with anything they could find. Saving a lizard, saving anything, was almost unthinkable.

But Tass had. Wrack had. And they'd kept it for her.

As it happened, she didn't need to voice her thoughts on the matter when the soft whine of her stomach answered for her.

Tass had almost laughed, and if she had the energy, she probably would have too, but after a moment, Tass had dug through the dried fronds she had been bundling up and pulled out a juicy little lizard about the size of her hand.

And when she couldn't quite bite through it, Tass had treated it exactly like the lasher fronds, biting the sharp bits and pulling until the soft squishy bits strung out.

And they'd made a game of it, in her mind. Tass would pull the little bits out, and she'd swallow what she could.

And though she didn't know it until much later, when she'd fallen back into unconsciousness, Tass had worked with Wrack to stitch up the worst of their wounds, healing what they could and giving time to close what they couldn't. And through it all, Sebaas slept dreamlessly in the dark as his body mended.


	15. Ruin 14 - Sneak p1

It was two whole days before she could work again. Two whole days without the Sethrak giving her even the little bit of food or water that they got as slaves. Two whole days that Tass and Wrack did what they could when they were there and not digging in the ground and hitting exploding rocks.

Two whole days that She could heal and hurt without being whipped or beaten.

Sebaas slept most of the time, only waking up to suck a little water from some of the lasher fronds that Tass collected on her way back. It wasn't much, but it kept him alive. She was greatful that Tass could even spare that, the Sethrak didn't like them keeping things, but they were vulpera, and being clever was part of what they were.

So when, on the third day, she had been drug out of the little crack they slept in, hoisted up by her neck, and a new chain pinned to the shackle on her waist, she had been a little surprised.

Biting had resulted. She had bitten the scaly hand as it had held her down and had been thrown into the rock wall as a result.

All in all, being sore seemed like a fair trade for being able to bite him.

Of course, it hadn't been a good turn of events in the long run. She had had her chain run along a stick that kept her out of biting range, but still well within the range of whips. So even with her little unintentional rebellion, she had still been marched across the dunes with Tass and Wrack and Sebaas to the hole and forced to hit exploding rocks again.

Sebaas did not look very good. Not when they pulled him out of the crack and not when they marched him across the sand. He had looked even worse when they had shoved the metal capped stick into his hands and hissed out their threats. Before they could draw the whip though, he had set himself to swinging the stick. Its metal cap sparked fitfully at Sebaas hit the exploding rocks, but it was enough to prevent the whip from landing.

She saw Wrack cringing but nothing more as Sebaas weakly attacked the rocks. Tass as well, returning to her own stick and rock.

Before long, all four of them were slowly working their way through the shifting light of the exploding rocks, picking through the dark of the hole in the ground, carefully breaking them from the darker stone of Voldune.

It was long and it was unpleasant, but after several hours, she once more set into a rhythm. Breathe, heave, swing, duck, breathe, heave, swing, duck. Over and over, listening for the little ringing twing sound that the rocks would chime out before exploding. Every now and again, she'd hear it from further in the hole and know that somewhere nearby Tass or Wrack or Sebaas was ducking before their own rock exploded with its strange sound.

She sank into a kind of numb motion, simply doing what needed to be done. Swing the stick, hit the rock, listen to the sound and repeat until the rock sang. Then she'd drop or duck and usually she wouldn't get hurt when the rock exploded.

Then she'd pick herself up and look for another glowing rock and start over to do the same thing again while the Sethrak picked up the glowing pieces.

Here and there, they'd miss a little chip, a needle or glowing singing rock. If she was lucky, she could step on it and clutch the sliver with her toes.

She'd managed to 'keep' three little slivers like that. Three little glowing chips of rock that would bleed gold when they broke.

She was saving them for an emergency. She knew the gold blood could heal.

But the snakes didn't. She thought it strange. They kept having the vulpera hit the rocks until they exploded, then they would take them away. She never saw what they did with them, didn't know if they did anything more than pile them up on the little sleds and have the vulpera pull them back. The Sethrak were her slavers, and having her breaking rocks seemed enough of a reason to them she guessed.

Still, at least in the hole she wasn't baking in the sun or fighting krolusks or ranishu every few hours. It wasn't good, but it could have been worse.

The whips made it worse.

Another twing sound broke her from her thoughts and she dropped to the ground just before the flash of light and explosion of glowing rocks knocked her handler over.

That had come from another hole, deeper than she had gone yet.

Deeper than Tass or Wrack of Sebaas had gone yet.

Blinking in the soft glow, she looked back to see her handler still on his back, eyes closed but breathing. The hand holding her stick and chain was limp, and though the other hand still clutched his whip, he wasn't moving.

Slowly, carefully, she pulled on her chain. In her ears, the sound of link after link sliding and coming free of his fingers sounded loudly, like rocks tumbling from the cliffs above. But no lashing came. No Sethrak appeared.

Licking her lips, her ears spinning even with the dull ache of the recent explosion, she shuffled off a step, expecting the burning sting of a whip to land any second, for the Sethrak to leap to his feet and slam her into a wall or worse.

None came.

So she stood, panting slightly, as she thought.

She was in the hole. She was in the hole with Tass and Wrack and Sebaas and the exploding rocks. Her handler was not moving but there were still rocks to hit with her stick.

She felt certain that if she was not hitting rocks when her handler woke back up that she would be punished.

But if her handler was asleep, he couldn't punish her, and if he was asleep, she did not want to wake him with the sound of exploding rocks or her stick hitting them.

He could even be dead, in which case she could maybe get away. She'd have to sneak past them all, get around the twelve or so other Sethrak, out the hole, past all the things outside and away. She'd have to find somewhere to hide, something to eat, something to drink. But she could.

She could.

But she heard the tapping and the tinging of metal capped sticks in the darkness.

And even though she couldn't see them, she knew that Tass and Wrack and Sebaas were still in the hole with her.

There were actually more vulpera in the hole too, but she didn't know them. They were vulpera, like her, but they weren't Tass and Wrack and Sebaas.

And what would they do if she wasn't there?

Licking her lips again, she picked up her metal capped stick and went over to the largest exploding rock that had broken loose. She raised her stick and heaved a sigh. There would be no escaping from the hole. Not today.

But as she folded her ears back, ready to hit the rock, she saw movement from the hole the explosion can come from.

Dropping to her belly instantly, she clutched her stick to keep it from making noise as the something crept up out of the hole.

It was dark and thin and shorter than any Sethrak she'd ever seen. It was covered in black things that made almost no sound as it moved and carried a knife that seemed almost as black as the rest of it. It moved carefully, making no sound even as it stepped on the small rocks the explosion had knocked loose.

And when it turned her way, she saw a pair of little, shiny, eyes that widened for just a moment when they fell on her.

She stared at it, and it at her, for a few moments until its seemed to hear something with its large ears. With only a moment to respond, she almost yelped as it raced at her, grabbed her around the middle, and plunged them both back into the darkness.

She squeaked in surprise, but found a thick fingered clove clutched tightly over her mouth, muffling the sound.

She squirmed, bit, even tried clawing at the thing, only to find that it was considerably stronger than she had thought. Maybe even stronger than the Sethrak.

And then it made sounds in her ear. Soft, hissy sounds that didn't sound like a snake. Hissy sounds that it repeated only a little louder before she heard a much louder sound from the dark.

She grew still as she watched the shadows move. Something else was there. Something big and heavy and covered in little patches of the exploding rocks.

She swallowed as she felt the grip on her ease up just a bit.

There was something bigger than the largest Sethrak down there. Something bigger than the Krolusk that had gotten her captured. It was big and dark and had the exploding rocks growing out of it and it made a sound like stone grinding on stone when it moved and she very much did not want to be between those stones.

And the thing holding her hissed softly in her ear again until the bigger thing moved away, lost in the dark deeper in the hole.

Finally, the thing let her go and she nearly fell before catching herself on her paws.

She turned around quickly, expecting an attack now that the bigger thing was gone, but found the thing looking at her with its little eyes from behind its strange clothes.

It was crouched down, matching her for height as she was on all four paws, and was watching her.

She could see its large hands and the thinness of its body. Its mouth was hidden behind a mask, but it certainly had a muzzle like her own, and the large ears looked quite familiar.

Was it another vulpera? But where was its tail? Had it escaped from the Sethrak? Had it been injured? Was it hiding?

But it didn't move like a vulpera, it didn't smell like a vulpera. She squinted her eyes as she studied it.

And after a few more moments, it leaned a little forwards and held out a thick fingered hand.

It wasn't holding the knife anymore.

It looked safe enough, and it hadn't hurt her...

So she did what made sense... she sniffed the fingers and thought about what the smell told her.

It was skin. Slightly dry but also wet with oil. It smelled a little like soured fruit and quite a bit like blood and plants. There was yeast there too, maybe bread, and lots and lots of sand and sweat.

But she didn't smell vulpera, and she didn't smell Sethrak.

And before she knew what was happening, it was closer to her and was touching her face.

She bit it.

And to its credit, it muffled its grunt well before quickly pulling back its hand with a small shake.

But it didn't run and it didn't fight.

And then it reached up to its own face and pulled off the cloth that it had been using as a mask and a strange thing looked back at her.

A strange thing with a big grin and a long nose where her muzzle was.

And while she continued to look over the strange almost-vulpera, it reached up to its ears and tapped one of the many metal loops it had punched though them.

Just like hers.

She swallowed as she crouched down.

Was it a slave too? It didn't look like a slave and didn't act like a slave.

But it was marked like one.

And then it smiled and touched its mouth before pointing to the hole above. She looked, listening to it with her ears to make sure it wouldn't try to surprise her, and saw one of the Sethrak looking around in the glow from the exploding rocks.

She stayed very still, holding her breath, until the Sethrak moved on.

And the thing softly cleared its throat.

When she looked back, it said something, hissed it in a whisper. And when she didn't understand, tried again, sounding a little different.

He was making stranger and stranger sounds, sometimes almost grunting or nearly singing, though always quietly. At one point, he almost sounded like one of the Sethrak.

Still, she didn't know what he was trying to say, so she just looked at him, looking at how he was dressed and what he had.

It was skin, thicker than she was used to seeing, that wrapped him. Leather. And it had been rubbed with oil and ashes and other things to make it black. She could smell them, even if she couldn't identify them. It was a he, she was certain of it. He smelled a little like Sebaas and some of the other vulpera, but also saltier and slightly bitter. He didn't have fur, so she guessed he was all wrapped up to stay warm, and without a tail, he was probably even colder at night.

She could see little pockets and things that were tied to his clothes, all carefully wrapped up and secured. Probably why he could move so quietly. And he even wrapped his feet! Very strange. She couldn't imagine what that would be like. Could she even walk? Her toes and pads let her cling to rocks and the tips of her claws let to get up and down steep things. She couldn't imagine having her feet wrapped up, but he apparently was fine with it.

Eventually he grew quiet and just looked at her before tipping his head in apparent focus.

Using a gloved finger, he pointed to her toes, which didn't make any sense.

She looked at him, then pointed at his feet.

He smirked and shook his hand like he'd gotten something on it and wanted to shake it off. Then he pointed to her toes again and slowly, watching her the entire time, leaned over and touched her foot.

She did not like it, but he wasn't hurting her, so she just watched until he gently poked between her toes and she realized what he was doing.

Snorting, she pulled her foot back quickly, mirrored by his own quick withdrawal.

And, seeing him make no further move, she pulled one of the little glowing slivers from its hiding place and held it up.

She could swear he had a glimmer of something in his eyes.

But he smiled and, after a moment, seemed to think of something.

Reaching up, he did something to one of the little loops on his ear, and then held it out in one hand while pointing to the little sliver of exploding rock in hers.

A trade. He wanted to trade.

But she knew that the Sethrak would notice too many metal things in her ear. It wouldn't work.

But his was green... like leaves. Like water leaves.

So she pointed to the metal thing and then to one of the ones in her ear.

And after a moment, the strange, furless, not-vulpera grinned. And my, did he have a lot of teeth when he grinned.


	16. Ruin 15 - Sneak p2 "Business"

Crouched in the dark, in the hole, down a deeper hole, with her head laying on a rock was not a comfortable place to be for her. Holding still while the dark not-vulpera used a knife and tiny metal stick to cut one of the metal things in her ear was nerve wracking. Doing so while her handler was somewhere up above, with the other Sethrak, nearly drove her to distraction.

But the not-vulpera had a metal ear thing that she wanted and she had a little exploding rock that he wanted and together they'd worked out a trade without a single word between them.

She'd give him one of the little slivers and he'd give her the green and yellow ear thing. They both got something they wanted and the Sethrak would be none the wiser.

She was quite happy with herself.

Even if she rather wanted to keep the little bits of exploding rocks, she could always get more. The Sethrak weren't going to stop making them hit the exploding rocks any more than they were going to stop whipping them. The whippings would continue and the rocks would explode for them to take.

The vulpera were just there to get whipped and explode the rocks for the Sethrak. The Sethrak were lazy... she didn't think they needed any more reason to whip them than it was easier to have someone else hit the exploding rocks.

Probably.

Distracting herself from the not-vulpera was not easy.

He smelled strange. He moved strange. He looked strange. He sounded strange. He even tasted strange when she'd bitten him.

Every part of him was strange and yet so much of him was familiar too.

He moved quietly and quickly. He saw things and figured things out. He was hidden down deep in the hole and clearly didn't want to be seen by the Sethrak either. He even had little tools with him, hidden in all that leather, that he was using to take the metal loop from her ear.

He could keep it. He probably would even though they hadn't agreed to it. She couldn't keep it and the Sethrak would certainly notice if she came back with more loops than she'd come in with.

Somehow, and she wasn't even certain when, he'd managed to sneak that little bit in past their agreement.

She smiled a little. If not for his lack of a tail, he might have been just a strange, furless, vulpera.

Her ear twitched as he stopped hitting the loop in her ear, a soft scratchy sound echoing in her head as he bent the metal and pulled it free. She almost turned her head to look at what he was doing before she felt one of his thick gloved fingers gently press on her ear, holding it in place.

It was NOT comfortable, but he did have sharp little things he was working with and after that other Sethrak had punched holes in her beautiful ears, she did not want for the not-vulpera to make a mistake.

She had far too many holes in her ears already. She did not need any more.

After a moment, she felt a gentle poke on the tender part of her ear, enough that she shivered but not enough to hurt, and a few seconds later, the pressure of his glove let up.

Swallowing dryly, she blinked a few times until the not-vulpera softly patted her shoulder.

Why was he touching her shoulder? He was supposed to be putting the green metal thing in her ear!

Then again, when nothing else happened before he leaned back, she supposed maybe he was just trying to tell her that he was done.

Tentatively, she reached up a hand and felt the base of her ear, soft fur parting as she slide her claws up the bottom edge until she felt it.

It was there. The little green and yellow metal thing was in her ear where the other metal loop had been before.

At least she assumed it was. It felt like it was at least. She couldn't see her ears, but she'd seen the metal thing and she could see the not-vulpera inspecting a twist of metal that looked like it had been one of the ones the Sethrak put in Tass and Wrack and Sebaas' ears.

She'd never seen hers, but she had seen all the others. They all looked the same, just like the piece in his hands, little dull, scratchy, horrible little loops of metal that screamed in her memory and burned when they got caught on things.

But not the new one in her ear.

It was smooth and light and cool.

And for the first time since the Sethrak had put holes in her ears, it didn't irritate her.

It was green. She was sure of it. The green made it hurt less. Like leaves and water and not Sethrak.

The not-vulpera looked over after putting the twist of metal in a little pouch and watched her quietly, a little smirk on his face.

And even though she'd never admit it, it took her a few moments to remember that there was business at hand.

Still holding her ear thing, she carefully pulled one of the little slivers from where she'd been hiding them between her toes and held it out to him. It wasn't much, barely the size of one of her claws, but even then he seemed interested.

She couldn't figure out why though. He was clearly clever enough to get some on his own. He was obviously sneaky enough not to be caught. He was stronger than she was and it wasn't like hitting rocks was complicated... but, for some reason, he wanted to trade for one of her little pieces of exploding rock.

And he was willing to trade a piece of cool, green and yellow, metal for it. He had even been willing to put it in for her so she could keep it.

She hoped the Sethrak wouldn't notice it didn't look like the others.

Still, a deal was a deal. Maybe he knew they could heal injuries with their gold/blue blood?

Strange, but she supposed that not-vulpera had their own not-vulpera wants and not-vulpera desires.

When he finally plucked the little shard from her paw, he held it up and looked it over carefully, his smile growing until he nodded and pocketed it. He nodded at her and said something it that scratchy voice of his, before pausing and reaching into his clothing again.

And when he pulled out a small thing and held it up to her, she looked on in confusion.

There, in his hand, was a wide spoon that he held upright.

But the strangest thing she'd ever seen was resting in the middle of that spoon.

For even though the spoon was upright, it didn't spill... which didn't make any sense at all because things fall out of spoons when you don't hold them right.

But there it was, in the spoon, in the hand of a little dark not-vulpera in a hole in the deserts of Voldune... a small vulpera that looked like Tass, holding her ear, in the dark.

Her ear had the green thing, and they were both beautiful.

-~oOo~-

She'd marveled at the little spoon for longer than she'd like to admit, fascinated by the tiny vulpera inside. She'd tried to shake her free, she'd tried assuring her it would be alright, she'd even thought about bargaining with the not-vulpera to help get her out, but every time she tried to show him, the little vulpera would go away.

In her confusion, she'd dropped the spoon and it had broken.

It wasn't until she saw all the little vulperas looking up at her from the ground that she'd understood that it wasn't actually a trapped kit.

She'd felt foolish, but how was she supposed to know it was just a trick?

She refused to pay him for his broken magic spoon... it served it right for sticking a magic tiny vulpera in a spoon.

She'd never put a magic tiny not-vulpera in a spoon. That was just mean. She would have at least given a magic tiny not-vulpera a pot to live in... and now the little thing was all confused.

She would be confused too if her spoon-home suddenly became a lot of little broken pieces that she had to look out of.

He'd seemed a bit frustrated, but at least he wasn't angry, and after scooping up all the little pieces, he'd poured them into a little bag.

Good. Hopefully he'd put the spoon back together.

Still, when he'd suddenly gone still and pulled her back towards the wall, she had almost bitten him again.

Almost.

It didn't count if her teeth didn't get through the glove.

Her ears had swiveled, her new metal thing feeling so much smoother than the others, as she picked up the sound he'd apparently heard.

He handler was stirring.

Swallowing quickly, she'd pushed herself free and started scampering up the hole.

If she wasn't hitting rocks when he woke up fully, she was certain he'd be angry.

The not-vulpera had tried to grab her, had even caught a few hairs from her tail before she'd pulled them painfully free, but she'd managed to get back up into the hole before her handler had fully woken.

She'd glanced around, looking for her stick, and had found it just in time to see one of his scaled hands flop onto his face as he hissed his pain.

Not wasting another moment, she hopped over to a nearby exploding rock and waited for the echoing taps of the other vulpera in the cave to hide her own light rhythm before slowly working up to a stronger hit.

Her trick seemed to work as her handler finally righted himself and hissed loudly as he got to his feet.

Listening closely, she continued hitting her exploding rock, keeping her tempo steady and hoping he hadn't noticed anything wrong. It seemed to work, and she almost sighed in relief.

And then the whip burned across her back and she shrieked in pain and surprise.

Suddenly finding her face held in the sharp gravel and stone chips, she felt his scaled hand pressing her down as a sibilant warning passed his lips and into her ear.

"How dare you ssssslip your leash, Bitch?" With a vicious shove, he ground her muzzle into the stone chips before pulling her into the said by her head. "I was jussst resting my eyes from all thisss work and you thought to essscape? From ME?"

His other hand slid up and wrapped around her throat, claw tips pressing in and scraping across tender skin before he paused and let go with a disgusted huff.

"Get back to work and don't let me find you slacking off."

Surprised at the reaction, she scuttled away and grabbed her stick before looking back at the oddly stiff Sethrak. After a moment, a pained grimace crossed his features as he held his head, the scaled hood of his neck looking oddly limp.

He proceeded to flick his tongue, a light splatter of red marking his lips before he wiped them clean with his other hand.

He remained quiet for the rest of the day, occasionally holding his head when he thought no one was looking.

It was a good day, with few whippings.

And when they were finally marched off across the sands, she had seen a short, dark, not-vulpera darting out of the hole and off across the dunes to the South.


End file.
